Something Better Than This
by Persephone Kore
Summary: Dementors, basilisks, weddings, werewolves, scrambled eggs, rats, runes, and Founders. The Horcrux hunt is on. Disclaimer: This is fanfiction based on the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. No undue claim or material profit is expected or intended.
1. Chapter 1: King's Cross

Chapter 1: King's Cross

A long, low whistle vibrated off the fog around the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter woke groggily to find that the scar on his forehead was pressed hard against cold glass, his neck was stiff, and Hermione was prodding him nervously in the shoulder. "Ow," he complained.

"Sorry," said Hermione.

"Not your fault." He sat up and tried massaging his neck with one hand and his forehead, aching for completely mundane reasons for once, with the other. "What is it?"

"We're almost to Kings Cross, mate," Ron told him from beside Hermione. Now that he was paying attention, Harry could feel the pull forward as the train slowed down. "I can't believe you slept through all that. Just as well, though."

"All that?" Alarm surged up, making Harry feel considerably more alert. "What happened?"

"Nothing _happened_, exactly. But the fog's been worse than it was last summer." Ron frowned uneasily out the window. Thick grey fog swirled up against the glass.

Last summer, the Dementors had been breeding.

"Ugh." Harry wiped a clear streak in the condensation on the window. It didn't improve the view. "Can't say I'm sorry I missed the scenery. I didn't mean to ignore you two, though."

"We didn't get here until halfway through the trip," Hermione said. "Luckily some of the DA took turns guarding you."

"_Guarding_ me?"

"Not everyone who doesn't like you got spirited off by their parents or went to be Death Eaters," Hermione hissed, then resumed a normal tone of voice. "Considering all that happened at the end of the year, we thought it would be best to have a prefects' meeting on the way back -- with the new ones Professor... Headmistress McGonagall had named before we left. Of course it turned into a discussion of what would happen to Hogwarts, and whether it would be open in September, and half a dozen other things. That was the main one, though, and we didn't like to say we weren't coming either way. It would have given the wrong impression, though I suppose we'd better give Professor McGonagall notice in time for her to be able to replace _us_. I hate to think of its closing..." She trailed off as the train chugged to a stop. "Well, we'd best take our trunks and go on."

"You were well out of the meeting," Ron added, hauling his trunk away from in front of Harry's. "Some of the others were saying the stupidest things. Hermione lit right into them, though, be proud."

"Doesn't Hermione always?" Harry said, splitting a grin between them.

Hermione was perched on her trunk, looking rather pink. "Well, I did my best. I _was_ quite surprised when Theodore Nott said he didn't think it should close -- he's replaced Malfoy, you know --"

"His father's a Death Eater, too," Harry interrupted in a low voice, frowning.

Hermione shrugged and stood up again, levitating her trunk but keeping a hand on it. "Yes, well, Blaise Zabini's mother hasn't decided one way or another about whether to send him back this autumn, or hasn't said at any rate, and Crabbe and Goyle would hardly be any better. Nott's generally been very close-mouthed; I was almost as surprised that he spoke at all as by what he said." Hermione looked thoughtful. "He referred to making Hogwarts into the fortress it was first intended to be. I'm not sure what he meant by that."

"Who knows what a Slytherin's thinking?" Ron muttered as they maneuvered out of the compartment and into the jostling crowd. It was sparser than most years, but nobody _really_ wanted to step out into the oozing fog, so things kept backing up. "He could just mean it's the best place to defend, which it probably is, at least until you start wondering how many secret passages and things like Vanishing Cabinets we _don't_ know about. Or for all we know he might think it used to be a fortress against Muggle-borns or some rot like that."

"According to _Hogwarts: A History_," Hermione said, "the castle was originally fortified in case of attacks by Muggles -- I understand Muggle attitudes toward magic at that time were a great deal less dismissive, obviously, but also, erm, highly variable, and the Muggle-repelling charms and other concealment spells that currently keep it looking like an old ruin and keep anyone from investigating it too closely were actually invented much later. When I was looking for the information _Hogwarts: a History_ omits about house-elves," she added with a bit of a bite to her words, "I also learned that they might have had reason to worry about attacks from _magical guilds_, though it's not clear if any ever took place. Most magical training up until then was done by family members, or family friends, but the most advanced studies were guild-based, and the guilds could be very protective of their secrets, so they weren't very happy that the Hogwarts Four had learned quite a few of those secrets or discovered them independently and intended to pass them on--"

"Breathe!" Ron interjected.

Hermione, who had been running out of air but not steam, stopped to gulp in a breath.

Harry seized the opportunity to ask hastily, "Wait a second. Okay, Hogwarts might have annoyed other wizards way back when; I remember Mr. Fortescue telling me about that once..." back before he'd been attacked "but I've got a different question -- does _Hogwarts: A History_ mention anything about items that belonged to the Founders? That might still be around? Left to their descendants, or something?" He wondered if he should have avoided asking about possible Horcruxes in public, but on the other hand, it wasn't exactly going to make anybody _wonder_ to hear Hermione gabble about history.

Hermione blinked. "Well, there wouldn't be many that could be reliably identified, after all this time. Hogwarts is the big one, of course, and there are probably any number of objects there that the Founders had something to do with. The Sorting Hat was Gryffindor's, to start off with, of course; you remember it said so itself our fourth year. And there's the sword you used... I saw mention of a few jewels that were supposed to be heirlooms of the line, but they belonged to someone who married into the family later on. Most scholars think Godric himself may have been dead by then, so you couldn't even say he handled them. Now, the others... I believe Hufflepuff passed down a cup to her descendants that was supposed to detect and nullify poisons."

"Sounds dead useful," Ron put in.

"I've seen... er... heard of that one," Harry said. He'd told them about seeing it in the Pensieve.

Hermione nodded. "Yes, well. You'd think Slytherin would have made a point of heirlooms, but nothing turned up for the longest time, or nothing really durable that could be verified as his. There's mention of a piece of jewelry turning up with his marking, supposedly too good to be faked, around... oh... sixty-odd years ago. I'm sorry, I've forgotten the date. It's since been lost." She lowered her voice. "Were you wondering if Voldemort might have something dangerous of his? Something else?"

Harry shook his head. He hadn't expected _Hogwarts: A History_ to tell him where the lost Horcrux locket was, though he still carried the fake one and the note. He was a little surprised it was even mentioned. "Actually, I was wondering about Ravenclaw."

"Oh! I believe most of her surviving items are various books. I'd love to read one someday; she was brilliant. Let me see. It's said she claimed to have built the largest sundial in the world, but never told anybody where it was."

"That's a little bigger than I was thinking."

"I thought it might be. There's supposed to have been some sort of lamp, too. And a quill pen, which was eventually acquired by Hogwarts and is used to write down the names of prospective students. And... Harry, are you sure you wouldn't like to look at the list for yourself? There are an awful lot of rumored ones, and there's a whole section on the evidence for and against."

"Yeah," Harry said distractedly, "maybe I should." It didn't sound as if _Hogwarts: A History_ was likely to be much help. Too many possibilities and most of them probably fake. He wished he'd put on a jumper when he'd changed into Muggle clothing. They were nearly to the door, and he felt as cold as if it were late autumn instead of midsummer. Sluggish and discouraged and as cold as --

The wind howled. The fog closed in. Harry abandoned his trunk and burst past the last few students in front of him, leaping onto the platform with his wand out and a bellowed "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" as he dragged sunlight on warm red hair to the front of his mind.

The silver stag ripped free from his wand and charged, catching the first of the Dementors on its antlers and flinging it into the rest. What had looked like fog seconds ago blackened, billowed, and crashed backward to the ground as the stag charged onward, then arced around in a wide loop.

The air lightened. As Harry's Patronus faded, however, the miasma pressed inward again. Sick dark grays swallowed the platform and teased at the edges of his vision. Harry caught his breath, gagging as Dementor-mist snaked into his throat, and cast another; screams were rising from the younger students and many of the older ones, from parents -- but here and there among the chaos rose a bright shout, and two of the voices closest behind Harry fueled his second Patronus. A little dog worried at the ragged hems of Dementors too slow to flee; an otter swooped through the air on its belly and scattered them like ninepins. He saw a swan trumpet -- Cho had found she had some fierce joy left after all, it seemed -- and radiant white wings bore down on the fog, veering off from a gigantic cat, no, a lioness, with a strangely warm tinge to its silver glow. He nearly tripped over a snake -- now who did _that_ belong to? -- and was almost sure he saw a flamingo and a platypus running around together.

Harry changed direction abruptly, and somebody's hummingbird Patronus drove its beak into his eye. Everything exploded into searing white; what vision remained in his other eye overlapped to show him everyone on the platform lit in rainbows against blazing white light that washed out any other detail. The rainbows slipped and blurred across everything as dazzled tears swam across his eyes.

When he blinked, the fog was only a low cloud again, and it was shot through with light and lifting.

"Never thought they'd attack the platform," Ron panted, coming up beside him with both his own trunk and Harry's abandoned one. Hermione was next to him, her hair even wilder than usual with the humidity. "That's bad, that's really bad. Right in London. D'you think they were just after the students, or went across to the Muggles?"

The three of them exchanged a horrified look and rushed across the barrier.

Into utter normality. They all hastily put their wands away and tried to look as if they had not just dashed through a solid wall.

At any rate, nothing was overtly wrong. When Harry stopped to study the area, he noticed that an awful lot of people seemed to be just starting to move instead of continuing to. Too many of them were looking around as if they'd just woken up and remembered they were going somewhere, and too few seemed to particularly care.

"Don't," growled Mad-Eye Moody from next to his ear, "_ever_ do that again."

"We were afraid the Dementors had gone after the Muggles instead," Harry said without turning. Nobody was in earshot. In fact, everyone was ignoring them now. He wondered if Moody had done something.

"They've been after the Muggles, boy." Moody sounded tired. "And we can't be everywhere. Order's doing what we can. At least they can't get at the Muggles' souls."

Harry did turn to him at that. "Can't they? Why not?"

"Well, I take it back. Long exposure can eat away at a Muggle the same as at a wizard. They can't _Kiss_ Muggles, though. Same reason a mandrake doesn't cry unless you've got some magic in you." Moody shook his head. "We were afraid they'd come after the Hogwarts Express. Had guards on the platform. There were more of them, though... more than left Azkaban."

"Breeding," Hermione said softly. Harry thought he heard Ron add, "Ugh!"

"That about sums it up," Moody said. "You did a good job pushing them off. Picked it up before they closed in, didn't you, Potter?"

"Just barely." Harry shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose being oversensitive to them is good for something after all."

"Constant vigilance, that's the key."

"And there are the Dursleys," Harry added. "I didn't think they'd come."

"Do you need any help with them?" Moody asked. "We'll give them the same warning as last year, if you like. As a reminder."

"No," Harry said thoughtfully, "I really don't think I do." He realized Moody wouldn't know this and added, "I mean I told them not to come. I was going to go straight to the Burrow for the wedding and only visit them later. I sent them a letter by owl." He paused. "Maybe that's why they didn't read it."

He walked over to where the Dursleys stood, looking stiff and uncomfortable among the drift of wizards and witches who looked less inconspicuous than they probably intended. "You didn't have to come get me," he said. "I thought you'd be glad to know. Didn't you get the owl? You must have read the one that said the Hogwarts Express was coming later, since you're here on the right day."

"I read your letter," Aunt Petunia said. She sounded strained and tired, and her eyes roved nervously even though her long neck didn't turn. "I didn't know what you were playing at." An angry retort leapt to the tip of Harry's tongue, that he wasn't playing, that there was nothing of play in what he had to do -- but her next words, though quick and sharp and just a little shrill, set him back. "Dumbledore said you had to come back one more time. I wasn't going to be responsible for leaving you at the train station instead!"

Harry took a breath. "You're right. He did say that. And even if he's dead, I will. I've been invited to a wedding; it's in less than a week. I'll come back once before my birthday. And then I'll leave you alone." He just hoped Voldemort would, but he didn't voice that thought.

If he had his way, Voldemort would be leaving everybody alone before long.

"If this Dumbledore's dead," grumbled Uncle Vernon, "why do you have to come back at all?"

"Dumbledore's not the one we had to be afraid of," Aunt Petunia said. "Not the most."

Harry looked at her in some surprise and nodded. "Because Voldemort isn't dead," he said. "Because Dumbledore wanted me to. Because if I come back one more time we might all be safer than if I don't."

Uncle Vernon glared. "We'd have been safer if you'd never been left on our doorstep!"

"Yes," said Harry, "you probably would."

Dudley stared; Uncle Vernon spluttered, apparently at a loss what to do in the face of agreement. Aunt Petunia pressed her lips together and didn't say anything.

Harry looked at them all and sighed. "I'm going to get rid of the people we're in danger from," he said, and turned away.

On his way back to where Ron and Hermione had been joined by Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, he thought he heard Uncle Vernon say, "Did he just tell us he was going to kill someone?"

He kept walking, and Aunt Petunia's response was only a murmur to his ears.

Harry joined the Weasleys, trying not to look at Ginny for too long. "I'm ready," he said.

-----


	2. Chapter 2: The Burrow

Chapter 2: The Burrow

The Burrow was better. Harry felt he could breathe again once they got out of London, which made him suspect that once their magical target had dispersed the Dementors had lost interest, or been called off, and returned to sucking the joy out of large and readily available population centers in general. It wasn't a pleasant thought. Clean fog was fine. Choking fog was bad enough when it was merely polluted, not predatory.

But at the edge of Ottery St. Catchpole, grass and the summer vegetable garden covered the ground with a hundred exuberant greens, chickens clucked and squawked and scratched as if they'd never heard of Voldemort, which they probably hadn't, and the warmth in Molly Weasley's smile and the easy welcome of Ron's "Come on, let's get the trunks up to our room" made Harry feel more at home than his mother's blood in Aunt Petunia's veins had ever done.

Harry flopped down on one of the two beds wedged into Ron's blindlngly orange room and grinned up at the ceiling. He might have a lot to do, might be planning to dive into dark water, and he'd be restless and edgy until he began, but being at the Burrow made him remember what he wanted to survive up on the surface.

"Ron," he said, sitting up suddenly, "I'm going to go degnome the garden."

Ron turned from his trunk, a mismatched pair of socks in one hand and a woolly hat in the other, and stared. "Now?"

"Yeah. Now."

"Are you daft? We just got home and you want to go do chores?"

"I don't know. It just seems like a good idea." He paused, looking at the shapeless woolen hat. "Is that one of Hermione's elf-hats?"

Ron went rather red and stuffed the hat out of sight, although perhaps it spoiled the cavalier effect somewhat that the hiding place was under his pillow. "Borrowed it last winter, then reckoned with the stupid cold summers I'd ask to keep it. You know, when she finally found out the house-elves didn't want them and all but Dobby quit cleaning Gryffindor Tower over it, she went all thoughtful and started murmuring about strikes and labor organization?"

"No, I didn't know. You don't think she'll start feeling sorry for the gnomes, do you?"

Ron laughed. "_You_ felt sorry for them at first. Then one bit you. We'd just have to get her to pick one up."

"She didn't stop feeling sorry for Kreacher," Harry muttered. He wondered if Kreacher was still in the Hogwarts kitchens. Probably, as Harry hadn't told him to go anywhere else. He still hadn't told Hermione about inheriting Kreacher, and wasn't sure he wanted to. But if he saw the house-elf again, he thought he might order him to take a bath.

"Yeah, well..." Ron left it at that and dropped the socks onto his bed. "I'll come toss a few gnomes with you if you like."

The gnomes probably knew exactly what hit them, or rather what picked them up and sent them hurtling through the air, but it didn't seem to help them much. Neither did numbers, even though schooling and Order business had kept all the Weasleys busy enough that it was a miracle Mrs. Weasley had managed to keep the vegetable section alone mostly degnomed.

The weather was unseasonably cool even here, but there was still some sun breaking through the clouds, and there was certainly plenty of work to do. Harry had worked up a good sweat by the time he and Ron could stump through the garden without any little potato-shaped heads popping out of their holes. Then Ron went off to join his mother, Fleur, and Hermione where they were welcoming four newly-arrived wedding guests -- the Lovegoods and the much less relaxed Longbottoms -- and Harry waved in their general direction but headed to the kitchen for a drink of water.

He found Ginny having one too.

Her hair was loose and windblown, as if she'd been out flying, though he hadn't seen her pass by on a broom. She seemed to have acquired more freckles since he'd last counted them. He found himself staring at her small strong fingers wrapped around the glass until she cleared her throat; he looked up at her face to see that she'd raised her eyebrows and looked amused. "Wake up, Harry. Were you looking for something?"

"Just some water."

"You know, if you're so thirsty you got stuck staring in fascination at mine, you can have this glass..."

He laughed at that and got his own. "No, just... thinking. Or not thinking." He really wanted to hold her. It really wouldn't be a good idea. He had to focus (even if, as his mind supplied unhelpfully, he wasn't really starting the hunt for Voldemort in earnest until after the wedding), and she was enough of a target already.

"I'm thinking it was the not thinking, or you'd make more sense."

"Must be," Harry agreed, gulping cool water. "Were you flying?"

"I was chasing a runaway pig."

Harry choked on his water. "Oh. Not quite so much fun."

"Not quite. I caught it, though. I think Fleur's mother scared it."

Harry's eyes widened a little. "Fleur's mother is here?"

"For the wedding, yes." Ginny frowned. "She's _odd_. She doesn't quite act like Fleur; she looks down her nose but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't speak much English. But she scares the animals, especially the chickens."

Harry thought of the Veela transforming at the Quidditch World Cup match and thought that he would probably run away from them too, if he were a chicken. That form they changed into, anyway. "Well... Veela turn into birds of prey when they're angry, right? Or something like them, anyway. Maybe they think she's going to eat them."

"She might," Ginny said, her good humor flashing up again. "We're having one for dinner. Mum asked me to fetch it."

He drained his water. "Need a hand?"

"No, but you can come if you like."

Harry followed her; Ginny headed outside, detouring briefly to pick up a handful of chicken feed and a knife before she strolled off toward the largest group of them, arms swinging. She let a little of the feed trickle between her fingers on the way, then scattered the rest of the handful in a few short arcs and stood waiting.

"Won't the other chickens notice something," Harry asked, "if they come to get a snack and one of them dies?"

"Chickens aren't that bright," Ginny said absently. "I won't do it in front of them, though. Harry... why don't Ron and Hermione get 'How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral'?"

"I didn't know they were going to say they'd come." It wasn't a very good explanation, and Harry knew it, so he thought for a little while and then said slowly, "They've been along for... for everything. Almost everything. I don't want them hurt either, but it's less... it's less like they'd be in danger because we were having _fun_."

Ginny snorted. "So if I were helping you hunt down Voldemort instead of kissing you, you'd be more comfortable?"

"No. Yes. No." _No!_ He wanted her to come back to, and with that, Harry realized with a start that he was thinking of coming back as a real possibility. And yet... he might not. And if he didn't... On impulse, he asked, "Will you be my second?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"I suppose Ron and Hermione are more like them right now. For now. But Ron told me once that in a wizard's duel, your second is there to take over if you die." He swallowed. "I hate to think of you in danger. I know, I know you already are, and maybe it won't do you any good for me to be apart from you. But I hope it will. I'm going to be annoying Voldemort a lot before long, though I hope he won't notice too much right away." He took a deep breath. "You fought him by yourself for a long time, didn't you. I'm not going to forget that again. If I die," and if Ron and Hermione don't get there first, "will you kill him?"

Ginny looked at him for a long time. Then she looked down at the chickens gathered and pecking around her feet and very calmly, with no sudden motions, reached down and picked one up. "If Voldemort kills you," she said in a low voice, tucking the chicken securely under her arm and holding its feet, "and Ron and Hermione are with you, then by the time I'd get to him I suppose I would have lost all of you." She started walking slowly away from the patch of feed-scattered ground. The chicken complained. "Damn right I'll kill him, if I can."

Harry scuffed his feet through the grass and walked with her. "It bothers me. The idea of being a killer. Murderer." It was strange telling her this. He'd known he could talk to her about Voldemort; they'd talked about the news time and again... but when they had been together, outside and away from people, they had usually had things they'd rather talk about and things they'd rather do. _Someone else's life..._ Now they were together, but not together, and he told her how he felt about hunting Voldemort because he shouldn't kiss her. Anyway, the chicken would probably peck him. "But it doesn't bother me as much as the idea of him out there, still running around and killing... a lot more people. Torturing them. What did Mr. Fortescue ever do to anybody?"

"I think," Ginny said, "it would count as self-defense."

"I'm going to hunt him down."

"Even then. After everything he's done, with what we know he means to do... You know he still wants to kill you." Ginny's eyes were hard. When she reached a low rock, she sat down on it and set the knife beside her, braced the chicken's body and grasped its head, and twisted with as much fervor as if she had hold of Voldemort instead. Its neck broke swiftly, but the rest of the chicken spasmed and kicked. Ginny stuck it headfirst into an odd object that looked something like a large metal funnel on a stand. The chicken's head dangled out the bottom; Ginny picked up the knife and cut it off, moving back quickly as blood spilled out onto the dirt below and splattered the nearby grass.

Harry thought of the thrashing basilisk, then of young Voldemort, talking of rooster feathers in a mocking voice. "...Does it bother you to kill chickens after he made you do that?"

Ginny went very still. The dead chicken's kicking died away in her silence. Harry was about to apologize when she said slowly, "Do you think it should? I thought you liked Mum's roast chicken."

"I do like it. And I don't know if it should bother you," said Harry. "I just wondered if it did."

She sighed. "It bothers me more to think I might have taught him how. I don't _remember_ it, myself. But I already knew how... and I do remember he told me the orphanage was in a city."

Harry chewed his lip. "I don't think he ever needed to learn how to kill anything," he said. "...Er, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I do like your mum's roast chicken." He shot her an awkward smile; she returned it a little reluctantly, and he offered hesitantly, "Really, I didn't mean it like that. He... when he was at the orphanage, he already liked scaring the other kids and hurting them. He hanged somebody's pet rabbit. I think the only difference was that back then he was afraid of being caught." He thought for a moment. "I think... if he learned how to catch and kill a chicken from you, then the chickens probably had a lot easier time of it if he'd come up with a way by himself."

"Hmm." Ginny considered that. "...Thanks. Want to help pluck when it's drained?"

They carried the defeathered chicken into the house some time later and turned it over to Molly, who promptly sent them back out after onions. They found Neville hunting for Trevor under the chard and detoured to try to help him, but had no luck, although Luna joined them in enthusiastic search and told them all about the underground mushroom farms being run by unregistered toad Animagus farmers.

The night's chicken dinner was very tasty.

-----


	3. Chapter 3: The Wedding

Chapter 3: The Wedding

Bill and Fleur were having a June wedding, if just barely. Much of the Order and those sympathetic but not in the know were gathering at the Burrow for it, many of them dropping in and out for dinner or staying overnight now and again, wedged into conjured or Transfigured beds. Harry didn't think anybody was Secret-Keeping for the Burrow, or if they were, an awful lot of people were in on the secret; it all seemed dangerous... but everyone came anyway, or came and went again and came back, recklessly and defiantly celebratory.

Clouds and rain drizzled in for the last few days of preparations, which sent both Mrs. Weasley and Fleur into fits given that the wedding was intended to be outdoors.

It wasn't much good for anyone else's mood either. Ginny quarreled hotly with Gabrielle over whether Fleur wasn't good enough for Bill or vice versa; Gabrielle won out, after a fashion, by reversing position midway through the argument and announcing huffily that _she_ thought her sister was wise and intelligent, and that it was clear Ginny was not giving her fine brother enough credit. Ginny fumed over this tactic until Gabrielle proclaimed further that given all this, Ginny's otherwise high opinion of Bill meant that Gabrielle must like her too, and kissed her on the cheek; the shock set Ginny laughing.

Neville fretted over Trevor, who remained obstinately missing; Augusta Longbottom frowned severely whenever she caught him at it.

Luna roved between the Burrow and her own home with a fine disregard for the weather and was regularly hit by Drying Charms on her way in the door. She seemed entirely unfazed by this.

Fleur's mother Estelle gave no sign of being worried. She could walk through the rain and step inside with no more sign of the damp than a brilliant sparkling network on her long silver hair, like dewfall.

Bill, having recruited or been recruited by Crookshanks, spent a good deal of time stalking with the cat through the house and garden in a playful war with Fred and George, disabling most of the practical jokes they'd planted. It was hard to catch a career curse-breaker off guard, evidently, and Crookshanks had a talent for sniffing out suspicious spells. Fleur insisted on preparing a beef roast one night that Harry regarded as a rather alarming shade of pink, but both Bill and Professor Lupin ate it with great relish and Tonks joked about it matching her hair.

The night before the wedding, _everyone_ was at the Burrow, which required considerable adjustments to the dining arrangements and possibly to the floor plan. Harry was reasonably sure that, much like the expanding rear seat of the Ford Anglia that now roamed the Forbidden Forest, the shape of the dining table was probably impossible without magic.

Mad-Eye Moody did Mrs. Weasley great honor, and ate food that had not passed near the twins without even checking it for spells or poison. Remus sat between the twins and across from Tonks, and despite his evident distraction completely failed to be discolored, disfigured, discombobulated, discomfitted, or otherwise disturbed. Fleur's mother had an unfortunate tendency to mesmerize half the men at the table whenever her hair moved, but other than that, everyone was getting along reasonably well.

There was a knock at the door.

Mrs. Weasley went to it and looked out; Mr. Weasley followed her protectively, wand drawn. The rest of the table went quiet, and thus, they all heard her gasp.

"_Ask_, Molly," Mr. Weasley said in a low voice.

She pressed her forehead against the doorframe. "Percy," she said softly.

George swore. Bill frowned at him.

"Percy," she repeated, her voice a little stronger, "what did I write in the note I sent with your jumper, the year before last?"

Harry looked over at Ginny, eyes widening. That was the one Percy had sent _back_.

In the dead silence around the table, they heard Percy's tired voice break a little as he said, "Come home."

Mrs. Weasley abandoned the security questions and instead flung the door wide and her arms around her wayward son. Harry, leaning a little to see, was relieved to observe that Percy hadn't brought Scrimgeour this time. He sat hastily back in his chair and pretended not to have been looking.

When his parents brought him into the room where everyone else was eating, Percy stopped in the doorway and blanched, eyes roving from one face to another. He went whiter when Mad-Eye Moody sat up straight and focused both eyes on him, and whiter still when his gaze fell on Bill's face. The marks Fenrir had left still weren't gone; they were bloodless at the moment, but the skin still gaped apart redly.

Bill nodded amicably to him. "Glad you got the invitation," he said.

"You _invited_ him?" Fred demanded. "After what he did to Mum?"

"Looks like Mum wanted to see him, doesn't it?" Bill replied without looking at his brother. "Come sit down, Perce. I'll conjure you a chair. D'you mind moving over a little, Gabrielle?"

Gabrielle didn't mind. She scooted over practically into Ginny's lap and regarded the new arrival with interest. As soon as Percy had been safely seated, she piped up, "Why is it that your brothers are angry with you? They should be angry if you did not come, isn't it so?"

Percy looked around the table, then at the small silvery girl beside him, and said, "Political disagreement."

Gabrielle wrinkled her delicate nose. "So? Politics are bad for dinner. Shout at each other later and then forget it."

Fleur, astoundingly, actually choked on her food. Swallowing hastily, she murmured, "It is not always so simple, Gabrielle."

"He reckoned," said Fred acidly, "that if he got promoted for not noticing his boss was under Imperius for a year, there wasn't anything suspicious. He reckoned he'd stick his head up his -- ow! -- in the sand with Fudge and call Harry and Dumbledore liars. And he sent back the jumper Mum gave him."

"Harry is not a liar! He was my savior!"

"He saved Ginny too, but try telling Percy that," George put in.

"_Enough._" To Harry's surprise, it wasn't Mrs. Weasley who broke in, but her husband. Mr. Weasley's voice was quiet but firm, and his eyes were steely. "Despite our... remaining disagreements, we're glad to have Percy home again."

"I think you needn't have any disagreement with the Ministry _now_," Percy said stiffly. "Minister Scrimgeour is doing everything possible--"

This was too much for Harry. "How's Stan Shunpike, then?"

Percy put his fork down. "Well treated. _Despite_ his claims to know about Death Eater movements. I should have believed you about You-Know-Who," he said, the words coming harsh and staccato, "but do you think that means everybody you like is trustworthy? Even when they say otherwise?"

"No," said Harry hotly, "but Scrimgeour admitted he was just holding Stan because he didn't want to admit that arresting him was a mistake!"

"Harry, will you please--" Mrs. Weasley began.

"Mum..." Percy had shut his eyes, and his throat was working; he appeared to be struggling with himself. After a long moment, he opened his eyes again and looked at Harry. "...I didn't know that."

It wasn't much of a peace offering, but things relaxed again a little bit, and in the morning, Percy was still there.

-----

The clouds parted with the sunrise, leaving only scraps behind and painted in a glorious spread of pink and gold. With this promise of a beautiful day where they could have the wedding outdoors after all, everyone exploded into a flurry of activity. There was much pounding up and down stairs, or in the case of the part-Veelas much gazelle-like bounding, and several ear-splitting pops as people Apparated as much to get out of each others' way as to show off. The animals had to be herded out of the way and the grass cleaned (and _combed_, if Harry had heard Estelle Delacour correctly, although he wasn't at all sure of this). Tree-boughs had to be arranged just so, to form arches. The kitchen had to be extinguished after Madame Delacour chose a supremely unfortunate moment to observe that it was traditional for the bride's family to take charge of the wedding, although the food was miraculously undamaged and the other repairs fairly minimal. And with two hours to go, everyone vanished into comparative privacy to put on their dress robes.

Harry's dress robes were dark green, as he had been growing -- again -- and had been informed in no undertain terms that _nobody_, witch or wizard, wore black to a magical wedding. "Except maybe Professor Snape, Harry," Ginny had added in tones of scorn, "if he were ever invited. Not that his clothes would make any worse luck than he would himself!" He'd been informed of a number of other interesting things about magical weddings, but somehow he was more inclined to believe that black dress robes were forbidden than that, for instance, Fleur would be required to wrestle a troll.

Ron's dress robes were a deep midnight blue, and he was very glad that they were _not_ maroon, although it troubled him that they flashed a luminescent, electric shade if the light caught them right. He said that they'd been a gift from Fred and George and wondered morosely if they concealed any hexes. Harry smiled to himself and peered cautiously out the door before suggesting that they illicitly practice the curse-detecting spells Bill had been demonstrating. The robes turned out clean, as he'd hoped -- most of their products were pretty good fun, but he'd have been really annoyed if the twins had tried to turn the dress robes toward doing something embarrassing.

When Harry made it outside to the area designated for the wedding, he had a brief and very nasty shock. The grass was smooth and neat and green, and on it were arrayed delicate conjured chairs in two blocks. At the front, though he had no idea where it had come from, stood a low dais and a shining white stone altar. A broad ghost -- he thought it might be the Fat Friar, and looked around for Nearly-Headless Nick -- was glimmering faintly in the sunlight.

It all looked distressingly like Dumbledore's funeral.

But nearly everyone was smiling, even those in tears, and the few who weren't looked sick with nerves instead of horrified and sad. Fred and George had an enormously long scroll with no visible writing on it and were cheerfully and with much animation directing various guests to one bank of seats or another. Nearly everyone was technically considerably closer to the groom's family than the bride's, but for the sake of symmetry assorted Order members and other guests were shunted off to separate sides via some obscure system the twins were probably making up as they went along. Fred handed him a bell, which Harry started to shake experimentally. Ron reached hurriedly over to muffle the clapper, muttering, "Later," and led the way to sit behind Mrs. Weasley. Percy was protectively ensconced between her and Charlie.

Bill stood with his father beside him, the wounds on his face angry red but clean. His fang earring looked fiercer than usual; the tip of it hung just at the end of one red furrow, as if it had been the one to bite him. Harry had to blink a few times when a bright sunbeam caught the white stone and Bill's white robes at the same time.

He leaned across Hermione to Ron and whispered, "Do the bride and groom always both wear white?"

"Sure," Ron whispered back, looking puzzled. "Well, usually. They're both getting married, aren't they?" He darted a slightly wary look toward Hermione. "What, don't tell me Muggle grooms wear maroon or something?"

Harry smothered a laugh. "No, and I'm sure--"

"Shh!" Hermione hissed, and they stood as music came from nowhere to herald the arrival of the bride.

Fleur was also in white, her silver hair streaming from a resplendent tiara which was presumably the one belonging to Great-Auntie Muriel. Harry didn't know where her father was, but her mother escorted her between the two banks of seats -- almost too much unearthly beauty in one place. Not that they were dancing -- Harry hoped that after that first encounter at the Quidditch World Cup he'd have better sense than to go mad over it anyway -- but they were still riveting. Fleur fairly floated, and _her_ eyes were rapt and fixed on Bill. She was already reaching out one hand to him as she handed off her bouquet to her mother without looking.

Gabrielle, now, Gabrielle did dance, as if she couldn't quite contain her excitement. In pale gold, she looked like a young and energetic piece of jewelry. Harry's mind flickered to Horcruxes, but his eyes fell on Ginny and he pushed the hunt aside one more time.

If Gabrielle danced, Ginny strode, and she looked like a flame or a Gryffindor flag, red hair streaming down over gold. Harry sighed, and thought about holding her, and the way she flew, the set of her jaw when she was solving a problem and the look in her eyes before he kissed her, before he said he had to leave her, when he would be standing with her in white instead of green and gold --

--All right, he _really_ had to focus. Harry sat up straight, cheeks warm, and hoped everyone else was looking at the bride and groom. ...Ginny wasn't, but he didn't mind that. She gave him a wry little smile at the call for objections, which nobody made.

The words "Till death do you part" sent a chill through him; Bill and Fleur had their hands joined, white skin and freckled, in a grip that looked as if death would have its work cut out for it. Bill's voice was low and warm and fervent when he said, "I do"; Fleur's rang out across the fields as if she dared anyone to challenge her.

Mrs. Weasley began the bell-ringing, and it spread rhythmically and joyously throughout the guests in a melodic clangor, every note in clear and brilliant harmony. Bill and Fleur kissed and started back down the aisle between the chairs, grinning fit to split their faces.

When they were halfway along, the bells' tones shifted to a sudden cacaphony, some of them transformed into honking or buzzing noisemakers, and the ones that stayed bells started spewing fireworks, streamers, and artificial birds that all dived instantly toward the newlywed couple. They deflected the nearest wave, then broke into a run and pelted, laughing wildly, for the front door.

-----

They had a dance, although they very nearly didn't. After the residue of the magical bells had been cleaned up and the chairs moved aside, Charlie took his life in his hands and went to look for Bill and Fleur inside. They hadn't gone far, he said upon emerging, only as far as a doorway, but he also suggested that someone else could try to pry them apart, as he'd rather try to part a mother dragon from her eggs. Madame Delacour extracted the somewhat disheveled pair, and the dance was on.

The sun was sinking slowly toward the horizon before all the guests who weren't staying overnight had gone home, Neville Longbottom still without his toad. Harry found himself oddly worried about Trevor, but he told himself that after all this time and all the occasions he'd been on his own, there was surely only so much trouble a toad could get into. Crookshanks would have brought back a pet, generally speaking, but hadn't turned up with Trevor; and it seemed unlikely that anything else had caught and eaten the toad, as Crookshanks wasn't likely to let some other predator run off with prey that smelled like one of Hermione's classmates. Maybe Trevor had sneaked off and stayed home.

Twilight came very late in June, but much of the family and several of the remaining guests were still outdoors. Madame Delacour had gone up to sleep, as had some of the other adults. Harry was still sitting outside with Ron and Hermione, breathing in the warm Dementor-free twilight and trying to ignore an odd restlessness. That kept him outside as much as did a certain embarrassment about entering the house while Bill and Fleur were... celebrating. Even if he'd been assured that there were silencing spells on their room, going both directions.

Ginny was catching up with Charlie nearby. Fred and George occasionally meandered past with their hands fixed to each other, courtesy of Bill -- they hadn't had many partners at the dance. Gabrielle was dancing by herself next to the vegetable garden and humming; she liked the way her gown shimmered in the moonlight, she said.

"That was lovely, wasn't it?" Hermione said, breaking a silence of several minutes. "Well, up until the bells went wrong..."

"Oh, that wasn't wrong," Ron tossed in. "I doubt they put it in the books, Hermione," he said, grinning, "but there's always something a little mad going on. Usually later on, but not always. It's traditional. Fred and George were pretty restrained really; some of the tricks are a lot messier."

"Oh." Hermione frowned. "Then why did Bill hex them?"

"That's traditional too."

"...Had you been to many weddings before? Either of you?"

"Some." Ron shrugged a little. "Cousins and such."

"I don't think I had," Harry said. "I don't think the Dursleys would have wanted to take me to any, even when I was too small to remember. Besides, imagine Dudley at a wedding!"

"Speaking of imagining," Ron said, "just what were you thinking about when you were staring at -- off into space during the ceremony, anyway, Harry?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Ron! You were watching Harry instead of the ceremony?"

"I just looked over at both of you a few times. I was paying attention, mostly." Ron turned his gaze expectantly on Harry, who suspected Ron had noticed that "off into space" hadn't been quite accurate.

"I was just," Harry said vaguely, "thinking. Distracted."

"Not by all the Veela, I hope," Ginny called over.

Harry grinned at her and gave up on any pretense. "Ah, you know better, you caught me looking at you!"

And then, before Ginny could answer or Ron could say anything, they were all distracted by Veela. Gabrielle let out a piercing scream and was backing away from the lush vegetable patch when they turned. She tripped over her skirts, the first ungraceful thing Harry had seen her do, and went down.

Fenrir Greyback burst from amongst the leaves. His foot came down on a squash, which exploded. "Greyback!" shouted Harry, and he heard an echoing wordless scream from somewhere, but his hastily aimed "_Stupefy!_" and whatever spells Hermione and Ron had shot at him passed just in front of the werewolf's face. "_Impedimenta!_" grazed him, but he was close to Gabrielle, too close, even though Harry was running full-tilt toward them.

"_Stupefy!_" roared from another direction entirely, in Lupin's voice, the red jet of light striking Greyback on the shoulder as he dived sideways. It spun him halfway around, dazed, but he was still on his feet, if badly off balance, and one clawed hand still reached toward Gabrielle.

At the same time as Lupin was casting his spell, from a higher window, a white figure was diving. Its inhuman shriek gathered volume; it had barely registered on the edge of Harry's consciousness at first, but it grew to a deafening pitch that made his ears ring and his teeth ache.

Something that was not quite a bird, but had wings and a wickedly hooked beak, drove down on Greyback and caught him in curved talons as he fell, jerking him around to face it. His reaching hand flailed and spasmed, and a thin line of blood appeared on Gabrielle's ankle before a beat of angry wings jerked him upright again. Harry checked his headlong run briefly, then dived for Gabrielle to pull her away. She clutched at him. Greyback raised clawed fingernails and bared his teeth at the not-bird, trying to snarl, but his mouth was slack and drooling. The white thing dipped its curved beak downward and ripped out his throat.

Estelle Delacour staggered back from the corpse of Fenrir Greyback, letting him fall as the blood gushed. Blood streamed from her mouth and down her front -- which Harry tore his eyes away from, as she was not dressed -- and a great splash of it decorated her hair.

Harry just held still for a moment, as he became aware again of everyone else who had run toward the fight, just now letting their wands fall.

Gabrielle clung to him for a moment longer, then broke away and held out her arms to her mother. "Maman! Magnifique!"

Madame Delacour caught her daughter up in her arms and held her tightly. Then she set the girl back from her a little and said briskly, "We will go and put your gown in cold water, to take the blood out," set Gabrielle on her hip, and strode inside.

"That," said Professor Lupin, from somewhere a little behind Harry, "was not quite how I would have expected him to die."

"Particularly as he was supposed to be in Azkaban," Tonks added. Harry turned and saw that she was scowling. He couldn't tell what color her hair was in the low light. There wouldn't be much moon, tonight. She shot Harry a glance and added wryly, "And unlike Stan Shunpike, he really _was_ supposed to be in Azkaban. Stunned him at Hogwarts."

"I know," Harry said. "Well, I knew he'd been stunned at Hogwarts." He frowned at the corpse. "What did they do, forget to make sure he couldn't get out as a wolf, last full moon? That'd be the worst time..."

"If by a smaller margin for Greyback than for most," Lupin said dryly. He tapped his wand thoughtfully in his hand, his frown mirroring Harry's. "With the Dementors gone, they have to have human guards, who shouldn't be deceived into thinking an animal simply doesn't exist, as they were with Sirius. On the other hand, human guards would still have trouble with a transformed werewolf." Lupin's voice was steady, but there was a strain to it.

"I'll have to check on that," Tonks said quietly. "I'd be interested to know when Greyback did escape, and if anybody else did. And _why the Aurors weren't notified_."

"At least Madame Delacour is not likely to be charged with murder." Lupin's smile was mirthless. "Perhaps she'll be made an honorary member of the Werewolf Capture Unit. If ever any werewolf was scheduled for termination..."

"Tonight, actually." Everyone looked at Tonks in surprise. She shrugged. "He was officially scheduled to be executed tonight. I object on principle to the lack of a proper trial, but I _did_ sit in on his confession." Her eyes were cold. "He bragged. And now I think you should probably all go back inside. I'll deal with..." She waved a hand. "All this."

-----


	4. Chapter 4: Godric's Hollow

Chapter 4: Godric's Hollow

"I've got to go," Harry explained a few mornings later over a breakfast that bid fair to make him too weighed down to fly. The shock of Greyback's intrusion and of Madame Delacour's killing him had started to wear off, and Tonks had apparently managed to smoothe things over with the Ministry as self-defense, or at any rate defense of Gabrielle. Nobody seemed inclined to prosecute on Greyback's behalf, at any rate. "There are... there are things I need to do."

He didn't want to explain all of them to everyone there; Dumbledore hadn't told him to tell the entire Order about the Horcruxes, or for that matter the entire Weasley family, and considering that Percy was still there, he really didn't want to get into details. He was thinking about telling Ginny, even though Dumbledore _hadn't_ mentioned that; he was divided in mind between whether this would give her a better chance at survival (and at taking out Voldemort if he failed, a burden he didn't want her to have but couldn't quite see denying her) or if it would just put her in more immediate danger to know. But he certainly didn't want to tell Percy, even if Percy had come home and talked half the night with his parents, coming down to breakfast with shadowed eyes. Harry was happy for Mrs. Weasley that Percy was visiting more again, but he still wasn't about to confide in him.

"I was thinking," Harry continued, "that I'd go by broomstick. I don't know anywhere to Floo to nearby, and I haven't got my Apparition license yet." He didn't have any real scruples about Apparating without a license, but on the other hand, he didn't see any reason to attract more attention from the Ministry that he had to.

"Godric's Hollow is a long flight," Mrs. Weasley pointed out dubiously.

"I like flying," he told her.

She pursed her lips. "There's also," she said delicately, "a... a certain amount of... fuss, there. Not quite tourism, but people sometimes go to see the... the place where it all happened. Where You-Know-Who fell. There may be fewer of them at the moment, but I don't believe most of the visitors would have quite the same attitude to it as you. And you might be recognized."

Harry stopped with a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth, set it down, and swallowed hard. He hadn't thought of that. "What _is_ it like? You've been there?"

"There's a barrier up," Mrs. Weasley said. She _had_ been there. "All around the house. What used to be the house. I'm afraid it's... not there anymore. I don't think anyone ever tries to cross the barrier. People draw on it, though."

"Huh." Harry frowned at the eggs, which did not deserve this, and started eating them again. "Well... thanks for telling me. If there are many people around, I'll -- I'll wait and come back at night. Maybe I should go at night anyway."

"We're going with him," Ron added. "Hermione and I, that is." He looked over at his mother. "We promised we'd go with him to the Dursleys', too."

"I suppose you're going to tell me _I_ ought to stay here," Ginny said, sounding oddly resigned.

Her mother turned to her sharply. "I'd like to keep at least _one_ of you safe!"

Ginny opened her mouth for an angry retort, but Harry broke in quietly, "So would I."

Ginny looked pointedly over toward the clock, where every hand -- including Percy's -- still pointed to "Mortal Peril." But she didn't say anything.

-----

They estimated the time it would take to fly to Godric's Hollow, adjusting for the speed of the slowest broom and the need to remain inconspicuous.

"I think you could borrow one of the ones nobody's using, Hermione," Ron said. "We'll have to ask around, though, before we can really figure how long it'll take... unless you want to wait until we get there and then Apparate, or something. Since you can."

"Wouldn't she need a picture or something?" Harry asked, frowning.

"Actually," Hermione said thoughtfully, "I think perhaps it's about time I bought my own broom. I can't say I like flying that well, but it's very true that there are times Apparating isn't the most suitable method of travel. I've been researching what sorts are best if you _don't_ intend to play Quidditch..." She trailed off and looked at Ron. "But if either of you has any recommendations to make on the subject, I'd be glad to hear them."

"I've mostly been interested in the Quidditch ones," Ron admitted, his ears going red for some inexplicable reason. "I know what people say about the others, though. You might actually want a Quidditch broomstick after all, not one of the really high-end ones maybe, but some of the companies pay more attention to quality on their Quidditch lines, and if you get one meant for a Chaser or Beater it'll be maneuverable _and_ good for the long haul, without being as touchy as the top of the line ones meant for Seekers or professionals. A Beater's broom might be especially good, they don't run as expensive and they're responsive but don't have much risk of wobbling over or veering off course if you don't sit perfectly steady."

Hermione raised an eyebrow and sniffed. "You don't think I can sit steadily on a broomstick?"

Ron gave her a cheeky grin. "Well, you know. A broomstick meant for somebody who's going to swing a bat around ought to suit if you're balancing a bag of heavy books and one on your knee..."

Hermione laughed. "Ron! I'm not going to try to read while I'm _flying_!"

"I bet you will!"

"You know," Harry said, "it's early yet. You two could go shop for a broomstick and be back before we'd have to leave, since we don't want to get there before dark. Get one with good Cushioning Charms, though. It's going to be tiring if this is your first really long flight."

Hermione and Ron disappeared to shop for a broom, and came back with a secondhand Beater's broom, made by Cleansweep, that had seen moderate use but had clearly been well cared for. With enhanced cushioning charms. Hermione took half an hour or so to get the hang of using one again, but the broomstick had evidently been a good purchase. It leapt to her hand on the first try, leaving her looking comically surprised, and it flew straight and true even if she twisted around to carry on a conversation -- or, at Ron's insistence, to try balancing a massive book on her knee. Or, for that matter, a large cat.

Mrs. Weasley packed them an enormous quantity of sandwiches, and they each stuck those and a change of clothes into their book bags. Harry deferred to the Weasleys' enforcement of the Decree for Restriction of Underage Magic and let Ron and Hermione do the Disillusionment charms, and late that afternoon they went on their way.

They arrived in Godric's Hollow just after sunset and walked into town, still Disillusioned and being very careful not to bump into anybody. It was a mixed community, magic and Muggle, and Harry noticed that the witches and wizards there seemed to have a much better notion of how to blend in than most of the ones he'd seen elsewhere. A young woman in jeans and a t-shirt (and not a Weird Sisters one, for that matter) stepped into an inconspicuous corner, turned off her cell phone, and drew her wand. Harry and his friends walked on, quietly.

The Potter's old house, or where it used to be, wasn't quite easy to find. There were signs posted discreetly for magical eyes to read, but they walked past it three times before passing close enough to discover that the ruins were not only invisible to Muggles, but invisible to wizards who didn't step off the pavement and into the dead grass.

From the pavement, it merely looked like a vacant lot, dead and unkempt and overgrown. No one turned to look at it, and no one stepped onto it; no children played there. Most people passed by on the opposite side of the pavement, or better yet, on the opposite side of the street. None of the Muggles seemed to realize what they were doing. Witches and wizards, some of them, glanced sideways and lowered their heads as they passed.

Harry was trying to avoid bumping into an elderly wizard charging along at a fast walk with his head down when he dragged Ron and Hermione both off the pavement and into the grass. And then he forgot about not bumping into people, because everything seemed to grow darker at once, and he saw the neat low wooden fence, decorated with colorful graffiti, with a field of dark ashes and rubble just beyond it.

He swallowed hard, staring. Then he and Ron and Hermione edged carefully back onto the pavement, and walked back out of town to sit down on living green grass and eat Mrs. Weasley's sandwiches.

They went back when it was full dark. There was a little moonlight to go by, and Hermione taught them a variation on _Lumos_ that would keep the light focused. As it turned out, this wasn't needed; there was a soft, eerie light that seemed cast from the inside of the barrier.

They stood just off the pavement for a long moment before Harry walked forward and pushed the gate open. It swung silently, unlatched, and let them in. Some barrier.

After another long pause, Hermione broke the silence in a hushed voice. "So... where do we look?"

"I don't know." Harry shut his eyes and called up the memories the Dementors had first evoked, the ones that had left him weak but tantalized by his only chance at hearing his parents' voices. "I think -- I think Voldemort came to the front door." He took a few steps, then remembered to open his eyes, and found himself at the very edge of the ruined house. The splintered wood there might have been a doorframe once, indeed. "My father tried to stop him. And died. Then he went further in to where Mum was with me..."

"Harry," Ron said in a peculiar tone, "there's footprints. Hagrid-sized."

Harry looked where Ron was pointing. "...Yeah," he said after a moment. "Yeah. Hagrid said he was the one who took me away from here, didn't he? Sirius..." He swallowed, feeling his throat try to clog up. "Sirius wanted to, but he gave Hagrid his motorcycle and went looking for Wormtail instead."

It didn't appear that much of anyone else had gone walking through the rubble and ashes since that last night. The bodies weren't there, so someone must have moved them, but maybe they'd levitated them from a distance. There were only a few sets of footprints.

They followed Hagrid's, having nothing better to do. He must have gone to where Harry had been lying, as a baby, in the ruins of -- no. Harry blinked hard as what he'd thought to be only some propped-up broken pieces of house resolved into a battered but intact cot.

Hagrid must have gone _there._

Harry didn't want to think about how they'd probably walked right across where his father had made his last stand against Voldemort. Thinking too hard about his father made his stomach flip, now. His mother must have stood... between him and the door, probably, but where was the door to this room? Those looked like the remains of a doorframe, there, maybe. His mother must have stood...

Here. A chill ran down his spine, and he turned, looking for... something. He wasn't sure what.

"Harry?" Hermione asked uncertainly.

"Shh." He didn't know what he'd meant to find here. He didn't know what neighbors he might be able to ask, wasn't even sure which ones would still be around who had known the young Potters before they went into hiding, or remembered them now. He'd just had to see the place for himself.

Now he felt he should find something. He kept turning slowly, very slowly, on the spot.

Ron and Hermione watched him.

"I don't know what I'm looking for," he said abruptly after a moment. "If you two want to look around..."

Crookshanks jumped off Hermione's shoulder, making her wobble, and went picking his way across the ground. Hermione went slowly after him, and Ron shrugged and began carefully poking around.

Harry kept turning.

In the end, he sank to sit on the ground, lowering his head into his hands. And then he saw it. Underneath the cot lay a smooth stick of wood... He reached out his left hand, holding his own wand ready, and picked up what had to be his mother's wand. It sifted a trail of weeping silver sparks, fine as dust, and then lay quiet in his hand. Harry sat looking at it for a long moment without saying anything, then jumped to his feet and went hunting for his father's, starting at the door and working back away from it, kicking aside broken pieces of walls and furniture. Ron and Hermione looked up from their own more aimless searches and started toward him, but Harry gave up on his casting around, concentrated hard, and said, "_Accio_ James Potter's wand!"

Ron and Hermione stopped. But all Harry got was a handful of burnt splinters.

He stared at them for a long moment. "...Huh."

"It --" Hermione began. "It must have been broken when --"

"The house exploded?"

"I thought... when Voldemort cursed him..."

"He killed my mum, too, and her wand's right here." Harry regarded them morosely... his own wand, his mother's whole one, and his father's blasted into splinters. "It was probably when he cursed me. The whole house came down..."

Something moved, back near the cot. It was only the tiniest disturbance at first, but then Crookshanks came leaping over a shattered wall in a blurring orange arc. There was a frantic squeak, and the motion near the cot turned into a frantic scurry. Crookshanks pounced -- there was an anguished squeal -- and the cat shook his head violently and then strolled up to them, purring, with a large rat in his mouth.

As Crookshanks came closer, Ron gasped. Harry's eyes narrowed. When the light hit the rat, it glimmered off something golden clasped in the tiny paws and teeth -- still clasped, despite Crookshanks's teeth, despite tight-squinched eyes and a curling, cringing tail. And the right front paw shone silver.

"Scabbers," Ron said.

At the same time, Harry growled, "_Wormtail._" He shoved the splinters of his father's wand into a pocket, wincing as one poked him, and pointed his own wand at the rat.

There was something very like an explosion as the rat transformed, rapidly and unexpectedly, to full human size. Crookshanks was thrown backward with a yowl, and Peter Pettigrew crouched before them, blood streaming from the back of his neck. Before any of them could react, he pounced, seizing Crookshanks by the neck with his powerful silvery magic hand. Then he straightened up, turning to face them and holding the cat in front of him like a shield. Crookshanks clawed at his arm, to no avail, and gagged. His breath was harsh and strained, Pettigrew's little less so.

"Let go," Hermione said, her voice shrill. "You're choking him."

"What should I care? He'd eat me, would he?"

"You'd've deserved it," Ron said bitterly.

"You might as well let the cat go," Harry said coolly. His wand was still steady in his hand. "D'you think I can't aim past him?"

Pettigrew's voice rose hysterically. "Start one word of a spell and I'll crush his skull!"

Harry smirked. "Did you stop paying attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts after OWLs? We started nonverbal incantations last year."

"You won't kill me."

"Why won't I?" The words burst out of Harry before he thought about them. He wavered for a second, shocked at what he'd just said, but then he thought about where they were and what Pettigrew had done and he steeled. "We're standing in Godric's Hollow, Wormtail. Where my parents lived. Where my parents went into hiding. Where _you_ were supposed to keep them protected and where _you_ gave them up to Voldemort." Pettigrew winced. Harry glowered. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you now."

Pettigrew's throat worked. "Your father," he rasped. "If he wouldn't have wanted them -- Sirius and Remus -- to become killers... just for me... what makes you think he'd want... want you to?"

"My father's dead. Sirius is dead. And I'm not sure I like them very much after I saw how they used to act at school with Snape, and I _hate_ him."

"So do I," muttered Pettigrew, then looked up pleadingly. "Your mother, then -- Lily --"

"Don't TALK about my mother! You don't get to talk about her! But it doesn't matter if they'd want me to become a murderer," Harry continued relentlessly, "considering I've got to kill Voldemort anyway. Yes, Voldemort. Stop flinching. VOLDEMORT!" Pettigrew cowered and let go of Crookshanks, who ran to stand in front of Hermione, fluffed up and hissing. Hermione picked him up. "I don't want to hear anything about how he's winning and there's nothing to be gained by resisting him. There is, and there always will be, and he's NOT going to win. But you, you helped him. You helped him the first time and you brought him back. I watched you do it. You took my blood and cut off your own hand to do it. Now tell me why I shouldn't kill you?"

"Harry--" Hermione began.

"Shut up."

Pettigrew's eyes were squeezed shut, and his left hand was still closed around whatever he'd been holding as a rat. "I owe you," he whispered. "You own me. He doesn't know. But I can't stop you."

"I don't _own_ anybody." Well, maybe Kreacher, Harry thought guiltily. But that hadn't been his idea.

"You saved my life once. You were merciful once. If you've changed that much, go ahead, I'll have to go back to him otherwise and at least this is quicker."

Harry held onto the anger, feeding it with the knowledge of betrayal, of watching Pettigrew fawn on Voldemort, of seeing Cedric fall, of disgust at Pettigrew's cringing, whining, manipulative begging for mercy and the rage every time Pettigrew begged in the name of friends he had destroyed. He aimed his wand and opened his mouth...

...And said, "What have you got in your other hand? That's not a wand."

Pettigrew opened his eyes and extended his left hand, uncurling the fingers. "It's a key. _He_ sent me back for it."

"A key to what?"

"I don't know, I don't know!" Pettigrew flinched again, as if expecting a blow.

"Did it belong to my parents?" Harry demanded.

"He brought it with him! He said... he said it would be the last."

The last. Did that mean the last Horcrux? "Give it to me," Harry ordered.

He tried to cover his surprise when Pettigrew pressed the golden key into his hand. "Here. Take -- t-t-take it."

Harry frowned, suspicion dawning.

Ron articulated it before he did. "If he was _sent_ to get this, why'd he hand it over so easy? And why didn't anybody find it here all this time?"

"Nobody found my mum's wand," Harry pointed out. "I don't think they looked very hard here. But I don't know about that first question..."

"He's not here now," Pettigrew muttered. "You are. And if you, if you, if you can --" He clutched at his left forearm with his right hand, then winced and pulled it away as if he'd bruised himself. He held up the shining hand and shook it in Harry's face, not exactly threateningly. "You see this... I was afraid, I gave in to him, I wish to God I hadn't. He'll take me to pieces in the end, take all of us. There's only the one left who really wants to serve him. Take--"

Pettigrew cut himself off in midsentence, transformed to a rat again, and ran at top speed for the barrier. Crookshanks kicked away from Hermione's arms, scratching her badly, and chased after him -- but Wormtail was through a tiny hole in the barrier before Crookshanks caught him. The cat crouched at the hole, hissing; Harry ran out through the gate and around, but there was no sign of rat or man.

Harry swore.

Then he pocketed the key and went in to cast _Episkey_ on Hermione's crop of scratches, although he ended up with an armful of apologetic Crookshanks and told Ron how to do it instead. Feeling there was nothing else to do here, they flew home to the Burrow, where they didn't talk much and all very quickly fell asleep.

-----

"What do you mean, it wasn't there, Wormtail?" Harry heard himself asking in a high, cold, level voice. His head was throbbing, as if the scar had a heart of its own that was beating, and threatening to split it open since naturally there wasn't enough room for a heart in his forehead...

Pettigrew cringed on the floor in front of him. "It wasn't _there_, m-my lord. I looked and looked."

"And why did you not take it with you from the Potters' house and preserve it as you did my wand? That was very presumptuous of you, but it came to a good end. This is just carelessness."

"I knew the wand was important," Pettigrew wailed, his eyes darting madly in every direction so that glaring into them was impossible. "You only told me the key would be once the boy was dead! You didn't say you'd cast any spells on it already!"

"How _dare_ you try to blame me for your shortcomings? _Crucio!_" As Pettigrew writhed and screamed, the cold voice continued, "I have reason to believe that key belonged to Godric Gryffindor. _You_ ought to appreciate that, if none of my other Death Eaters do." Harry raised his head to see a white snakelike face and red eyes in the mirror across the room, and standing next to it, with his hood thrown back and mask off, the familiar features of Severus Snape. "I should have given you the honor of coming with me instead."

Snape inclined his head, expressionless.

Rage welled up in Harry, his own rage -- and at that, he felt a sudden shock of surprise, and then a door slammed shut in his mind.

He sat up in bed, in the dark, and touched his fingers to his scar where pain was rapidly fading.

-----


	5. Chapter 5: Breakfast

Chapter 5: Breakfast

After dreaming about Voldemort, or rather _as_ Voldemort, for the first time in well over a year, Harry didn't really feel like going back to sleep. So despite how late they'd all come back the night before, he was up before anyone else. Ron still seemed to be asleep, from which Harry concluded that he hadn't actually been yelling this time, so he lay still and stared at the ceiling and listened to Ron breathe and tried not to think very much until it was four o'clock and he could at least pretend it was morning.

He got up and dressed very quietly, without any lights. Some of his oldest clothes almost fit by now, since even Dudley had only succeeded in being as broad at any given time as a boy several years older than himself.

Harry took the items they'd found in Godric's Hollow out of the pockets of yesterday's clothing, working the last few splinters out where they had pierced the fabric. He took them all downstairs and spread them out on the kitchen table, then sat and stared at them for a while.

His mother's wand was smooth under his hand. His father's wand was all in long jagged fragments. One of them seemed to have a string of some sort stuck to it -- maybe that had been the core.

Harry stood up and pointed his own wand at it. "_Reparo!_"

At first he didn't think it had worked, but then the string straightened itself out and the other pieces began clumping together and aligning themselves along it. Some bits still seemed to be missing, though; Harry could still see cracks and gaps, and when he gingerly picked up the wand, a few small bits fell off. Still, it was something.

He chewed his lip for a while, trying to remember the incantation Amos Diggory had used at the Quidditch World Cup and then trying to decide whether it was really a good idea, before touching his own wand gingerly to his mother's and whispering, "_Prior Incantato._"

A pale purple beam shot out from the tip, looking livid and angry; Harry jumped aside as it passed through him with a sharp buzzing sensation, but the beam had no other apparent effect. It was only the ghost of a spell, after all. Granted it left him little wiser what it had been, but he guessed his mother must have tried to cast some curse against Voldemort before they started arguing.

Not that it had been a very long argument.

He wondered why Voldemort had offered to let her live. He couldn't have thought she'd join him, could he? Would he even have taken her? Half-bloods, yes, apparently, but a Muggle-born? Maybe it would have been a trick.

_He'll take me to pieces in the end, take all of us._

Maybe he'd had worse in mind if she'd given in.

Harry wrenched his mind away from thoughts of Pettigrew and eyed the key. It didn't seem likely to tell him anything -- Dumbledore had said there was only one known heirloom of Godric Gryffindor's, but if Voldemort had thought this was one too, then he'd probably brought it to be his final Horcrux. It probably _wasn't_, since if Voldemort had meant to make his last Horcrux from Harry's death, he wouldn't have had any reason to change his mind until it was too late. Which meant the key was probably useless... except that for some reason Voldemort had wanted it again, and that was reason enough not to let him have it. Unless, perhaps, that dream last night hadn't been carelessness on Voldemort's part. He'd certainly seemed surprised, though.

Harry sighed and looked out at the pre-dawn light, listening to the faint sound of the chickens beginning to gabble outside. He kept waiting to hear a rooster crow, but apparently the Weasleys had lazy roosters. He wasn't getting anywhere this way. Maybe if he talked to Ron and Hermione. Maybe Lupin. He wished he could still talk to Sirius. This might have interested him, cheered him up...

He wished he could still talk to Dumbledore.

He heaved another sigh, got up from the table, and started making breakfast. Mrs. Weasley would probably be down before very much longer, but he did know how to cook -- poor cooking was not one of Aunt Petunia's flaws and she hadn't tolerated it when she made him help her in the kitchen -- and he didn't think Mrs. Weasley would mind a little help. Not from him, anyway. He'd just make enough for the first few people down; that way nothing would be wasted.

Harry was only on the third fried egg, having stopped to eat the first one, when a soft pop made him turn around. He wasn't expecting the twins, who would have been much louder, but he _definitely_ wasn't expecting Percy.

They blinked at each other for a moment. Percy looked rather dazed, possibly because it was before five o'clock in the morning and he'd just Apparated into his mother's kitchen to find someone who was not a relative.

Harry shrugged and picked up a plate. "Egg?"

Percy stared at it. "It looks like one."

"You're not awake yet, are you? Funny, I always sort of thought you'd be a morning person."

Percy evidently processed the extended plate of egg as an offer and accepted it, collapsing into a chair at the table and looking curiously at the key and two wands. "Still awake. Worked all night. What are those?"

Harry came around to whisk them hastily off the table and back into his pockets, wincing a little as he felt the repair job on his father's wand crumble. "Just some stuff."

"Oh." Percy stared at his egg.

Harry started some more bacon. "Why were you working all night?" he asked casually. He felt very much awake, himself. "Something going on?"

"Isn't something always?" Percy took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "Death Eaters in a Muggle area... We think they were specifically targeting the family of a Muggle-born student, but as far as we can tell no one was home. On holiday, perhaps. Three of the neighbors are in St. Mungo's for spell damage and the rest have been interviewed and Obliviated. Minister Scrimgeour called me in to handle paperwork on the matter, especially the writeups to be released to the press." He looked up. "You might be pleased about one thing, anyway. Stan Shunpike's loose and, er, officially said to be cleared. They needed the space to keep all the Death Eater captives separate."

"I'm sure Stan's in great shape, too, after over a year in Azkaban."

"It's not as bad without the Dementors."

"Some comfort."

Percy sighed. "They're holding Goyle on your word alone, you know. He wasn't at the Department of Mysteries last year or Hogwarts this year, and none of the other Death Eaters have testified against him."

"That's more than they had on Stan," Harry said, "once they knew he'd been talking nonsense. Here's your bacon. What student?"

"Pardon?"

"What Muggle-born student's family were they attacking?" Harry asked patiently, turning back to crack more eggs. And make toast. There ought to be toast.

Percy poked at his plate. "The Clearwaters."

Harry took a moment to place that name, but Percy's gloomy tone helped him connect it to the girl Percy had been going out with, who'd been Petrified with Hermione. "_Oh._" He stood very still for a moment. "Er, were -- are -- you and Penelope still --"

"We haven't been in touch lately. We were both... very busy with work. She was still living with her parents, didn't want to get a separate flat. That was the last thing we talked about." Quietly, "I don't even know what she thought about the return of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"Well, I doubt she's happy about it," said Harry. "Look, if the Death Eaters were caught and it doesn't look like anybody was home, she's probably all right, right?"

"Maybe." Percy's mouth looked very thin.

Harry sighed. "Do you want another egg?"

"No, thanks." Percy looked up at him again, puzzled. "Why are you cooking breakfast?"

Harry shrugged. "I was up."

Percy found nothing to argue with in this, and they gave up talking until Mrs. Weasley came into the kitchen and stopped, looking between them. "Percy! Harry..." She trailed off. "Good morning. Harry, why on earth are you cooking breakfast? You don't need to do that. Here, let me--"

Harry retreated gracefully from the stovetop and associated implements, although everything currently on was about ready, and watched Mrs. Weasley discover this fact and start dishing out the eggs. "I woke up early, that's all." For effect, he faked a yawn, which turned real halfway through and was therefore reasonably convincing. "Why don't you go ahead and eat? I don't think there's any rush..."

Mrs. Weasley hesitated over this for a moment, but it was true that there was plenty of food ready to start off the next person or two who came looking for it. She settled down with a plate across from Percy. "Aren't you sweet," she said. "Percy used to start breakfast for me some mornings, too... I couldn't trust most of the others alone in the kitchen, so they didn't dare. He was the only one after Bill who never got the eggs on the ceiling."

Harry muffled a snort of laughter. Aunt Petunia would have killed him for getting eggs on the ceiling. "I've heard of being able to eat off the floor, but the ceiling would have to be tricky." He eyed them for a moment. "If you don't want me to fix anything more..."

"You needn't; I'll take care of it," Mrs. Weasley hastened to assure him.

"Then I think I'll go back up to Ron's room. See if he's awake." Harry thought this was very unlikely, but he slipped back up the stairs anyway and left Percy alone with his mother.

-----

It was afternoon by the time he managed to get Ron and Hermione off by themselves. They sat outside under a tree and nibbled ginger biscuits under the dappled leaf-shadows until Hermione finally broke the silence by blurting, "Were you really going to kill Pettigrew?"

Harry dropped his biscuit, then dusted it off and ate it anyway. "Was Crookshanks?" He shook his head at once. "Sorry. I -- I don't know." He didn't meet their eyes. "I thought I meant it for a minute. But I couldn't do it."

"He might deserve it, mate," Ron said quietly, "but I don't think you deserve to have to do it. And it's not like he's You-Kn-- sorry. Voldemort."

"No, he isn't," Harry said moodily. "But he led him right to my parents." He tossed the key up into the air once and caught it. "I didn't realize it at first, just from his saying Voldemort had brought this with him. But he did. He was _there_."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said softly.

"I dreamed about them last night." Harry shut his eyes and rubbed at the scar on his forehead. "I hadn't dreamed about Voldemort -- I mean, dreamed I _was_ Voldemort, through his eyes -- for a long time. Dumbledore... Dumbledore said Voldemort was probably using Occlumency himself, after what happened at the Ministry. I suppose he must have forgotten tonight, or something. When he noticed I was there, he shut me out. But he was torturing Pettigrew for not bringing back the key. And Snape was there, and he told Snape he should have let him come with him instead."

When he opened his eyes, Hermione was frowning, but not at him. "And yet he gave you the key..."

Harry swallowed, feeling a little sick at the reminder that he'd demanded the key and then sent Pettigrew -- well, let him get away -- to Voldemort, knowing he'd be punished. "And talked about Voldemort taking them all to pieces..." He trailed off, staring at the leaves as they moved in the breeze. "It's hard to make him meet your eyes," he said slowly. "I wonder if Voldemort knows... I watched him lie, and I don't think Voldemort used Legilimency to check. At least, not while I was watching. He might not know I've got this."

"He's sent false visions before," Hermione said.

Harry winced. "He felt surprised this time, though. And he really did seem angry. I don't think Dumbledore thought all the dreams were on purpose -- not the ones like this. Just the ones where he was looking for the door, or about Sirius."

Hermione frowned, but rather to his surprise, she dropped it. "What did Pettigrew lie about, exactly?" she asked.

"Oh. He said he never found the key. He didn't mention us." Harry went on to tell them the whole dream, careful not to omit anything. He rubbed the key between his fingers. "Dumbledore told me Gryffindor had only left the sword, but I suppose Voldemort could have found something else... or thought he did."

Hermione blinked at him. "What about the Sorting Hat?"

"What about it?"

"It said that Godric used to wear it," Hermione said patiently. "I mentioned that on the train."

Harry sat back on his heels, rattled. So it had. "It was sitting right there in his office when he said that, too," he said. "And the sword came out of it. At least, the first I saw of it... The Hat dropped it on my head in the Chamber of Secrets."

"Ouch," said Ron. "Well, maybe he was counting the Sorting Hat and the sword together, then. Or reckoned the Hat went with all four of them."

"Voldemort was in Dumbledore's office once," Harry said uneasily. "With the Sorting Hat, and I suppose the sword inside it. I hope that doesn't mean it _wasn't_ safe."

"Surely Professor Dumbledore would have noticed if there was a Horcrux right in his own office," Hermione objected. "Or anywhere in Hogwarts!"

"I'm not so sure about anywhere in Hogwarts," Ron said. "There've been a few things he missed there. Wish he hadn't. Still, if he could track down where one was supposed to be and wasn't, I doubt he'd miss one that was _really_ right under his nose. Still doesn't explain the key, though."

"I don't know if it matters whether the key was _really_ Gryffindor's or not," Harry said slowly. "If Voldemort thought it was, and couldn't get at the sword or the Sorting Hat, he'd use it anyway."

"Gryffindor could've put enchantments on it, though," Ron pointed out. "Maybe it would have let him into Hogwarts."

"You'd think he would have gone looking for it sooner, then," Harry muttered. "Well... better keep it safe, anyway."

"Does that mean with you, or in Gringott's?" Hermione asked.

Harry weighed it in his hand and then pocketed it. "Maybe it would be safer in Gringott's," he said. "But I meant with me."

-----


	6. Chapter 6: Mirror, Mirror

Chapter 6: Mirror, Mirror

Harry knew perfectly well that he ought to be visiting the Dursleys, but he kept putting it off. He also ought to be searching for Horcruxes, but he was reaching the uneasy conclusion that he didn't know where to start. It would have been nice if Dumbledore had had a chance to share more of his methods -- not just Voldemort's acquisition of his "souvenirs," but how he'd gone about locating them. Even if one of them hadn't been there, which wasn't encouraging either.

The ring's location had evidently been a deduction, as Voldemort had stored it in the same place he got it, and the false locket had been in another place Voldemort had considered significant, but _not_ where he'd obtained it. Harry couldn't think of too many other places Voldemort would have considered suitable souvenirs -- except Hogwarts itself, and he didn't like that thought at all.

Something else told him it was wrong, too. Voldemort had never _controlled_ Hogwarts, not really. Dumbledore had always been there. The Gaunts' hovel, the cave, those were places where Voldemort had been in control and had tormented and humbled somebody weaker than himself.

He spent more than one night in an uneasy dream of Kreacher prancing about in filthy green robes and clashing together mirrored cymbals that reflected everything else in weird distorted shapes. The house-elf would caper about and wrap himself in ragged curtains, drink from Hufflepuff's cup... a heavy golden locket hung on his scrawny chest, weighing him down. When Dobby showed up and they began wrestling and pulling ears over the various items, Harry woke up and stared at the ceiling for a long moment, then jumped out of bed and shook Ron. "Ron, wake up!"

"Mrffshuh?" Ron roused groggily, looked around the room, and buried his head back in the pillow. "Not morning yet."

"We need to go back to Sirius's house," Harry told him. "I think I saw one of the Horcruxes there."

"_What?_" Ron sat up, shaking his head. "How d'you mean?"

"We found a locket there. I didn't know it was anything special or worse than anything else there, but it was gold instead of silver and it had a fancy S on it. Maybe R. A. B. was a Black! Or maybe they got it away from him, I don't know."

"All right," Ron said. "All right. We can go." He rubbed his eyes. "Do you want to go _now_? It's four in the morning."

Harry looked at the clock. "Er... it can wait. Sorry."

Rather to his surprise, Harry went back to sleep and did not have any more dreams of cackling house-elves, which was a great relief.

When he explained his latest recollection to Hermione, she frowned. Somehow Harry was not surprised.

"Are you sure you can get in?" she asked.

"Well," Harry said, rather taken aback, "I did inherit it."

"Yes," Hermione said darkly, "and Kreacher."

"I don't know what else you want me to do with him," Harry muttered. "I can't exactly let him run off to Bellatrix Lestrange."

Hermione sighed. "I know. But Kreacher isn't really the point. Do you know what kind of defensive spells you'll have to get past or deactivate? I mean, ones that might be supposed to keep anyone other than the rightful owner out, not just all the nasty leftover pieces of things that wouldn't cooperate even with... even with Sirius." She blinked and frowned again suddenly. "For that matter, do you even have a _key_? I assume there's a lock and not just spells, and I don't know that I'd expect _Alohomora_ to work!"

"All right," said Harry, "that _is_ a good point. And I told Dumbledore that the Order could still use it, and I don't know whether they did or not."

"It could even still be under Fidelius," Hermione said quietly.

Harry frowned at that. "Well, if it is, we're all still in on the secret." He paused. "Wait. What happens if the Secret-Keeper dies? Does the charm just end?"

"That'd be pretty pointless, wouldn't it?" Ron shook his head. "I don't know all about how it works. It's not exactly a common spell. But I don't think somebody can get around it just by finding out and killing the Secret-Keeper. Too easy. You hear about Secret-Keepers being captured and tortured, not just killed outright."

"You're cheerful," Harry said. "Anyway, if there's a key to it, or other spells I need to know about that came with the house or got added by the Order..."

"Someone still has to know," Ron finished for him. "So who do you need to talk to?"

-----

According to Mrs. Weasley, who screwed up her face and looked pained at the mention of 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry needed to talk to Remus Lupin. She obligingly invited him over and deposited him and Harry in a small, quiet room with a variety of warmed-up leftovers, evidently feeling that this was to be a grueling conversation that required nourishment. Either that or she still felt that both of them needed feeding up.

"Yes," said Lupin, "you should be able to get in. The Order hasn't been back there as much for a while, though it's still technically under Fidelius as headquarters."

"Are you the new Secret-Keeper?" Harry asked.

Lupin shook his head with a self-deprecatory smile. "No, I'm not. Do you think you need to know who is?"

Harry considered this. "Would you tell me if I said yes?"

"It _is_ your house."

"Wish it weren't." Harry sighed. "Just what I need to do to get in, please."

Lupin gave him a brief but thorough explanation of the security measures on the house. Harry committed them carefully to memory and accepted a large old key that looked as if it might twist around and bite.

They decided not to fly to Grimmauld Place. Instead, with Harry's assurance that it was really not that different from regular Apparition, Hermione tried out Side-Along Apparition. They started out sensibly enough by going across an open field out back of the Burrow.

"It's just the same as without us," Harry insisted. "Well, except that you do want to think of bringing us along."

Hermione tried to shove her hair out of her face with the arm Harry was holding. "Ow. I don't see how I'm supposed to be able to pivot like this at all!"

She stepped forward, trying to turn. Harry and Ron shuffled hastily around her in an attempt to make this easier and discovered that they were otherwise still in the same place.

"Where in the turn do you usually disappear?" Ron asked.

"You've done it," Hermione said irritably. "You ought to know."

"Well, for all I know it's getting to the wrong bit of the turn that makes you leave eyebrows behind," Ron retorted.

"No, it's a lack of concentration. You almost had it, really; I'm sure you'll get it next time. You're going with Harry to the summer test, aren't you? There's one on the first of August, by the way."

"Yes, I know there is, and yes, I'm going!"

"Good!" With that, Hermione strode determinedly forward, wrenched around -- and they were across the field, staggering slightly.

Harry spat out a springy lock of Hermione's flyaway hair. "I think you've got it."

They went back to collect a few useful items, including Harry's Invisibility Cloak (which he stuffed into a pocket) and some Shield Gloves he'd bought while wandering through Weasley Wizarding Wheezes, which seemed likely to be useful for handling the items in the old Black house.

Harry frowned at his pair of gloves for a long moment, thinking of a music box, but he had to leave Ginny out of this.

The three of them arrived in an alley where Hermione said she had been brought by Portkey nearly two years ago and strolled up to the juncture between numbers 11 and 13.

Number 12 was not there.

Harry frowned at the lack of a gap or any other sign, doubt beginning in his stomach, and then stepped deliberately forward.

The Black house squeezed into existence, and with a relieved sigh, they all trooped up to the door. Harry put the excessively toothy key Lupin had given him into the lock and twisted it, putting a good bit of his weight on it as the bolt slid grindingly back. At his first try it didn't seem to have worked, but the second time he turned the doorknob, he felt a sort of jolt deep inside it, and it opened under his hand.

He let the other two in and shut the door very quietly, not wanting to wake the portrait of Mrs. Black, and then looked around.

If the house had felt dying before, now it really did feel dead. Dust drifted in the air, and something that looked like broken glass and sand crunched under their feet, as if someone had shattered an hourglass.

"I did think the Order wouldn't have left quite this much of a mess," Hermione muttered, eyeing the floor with distaste.

"Maybe it was Mundungus," murmured Harry. He took a few more steps forward, and there was a loud crack as his foot fell on a larger piece of glass he hadn't seen.

At once, a loud, horrible wail rose from Mrs. Black's painting. The curtains over it were thrown back, but they bunched up and rose to meet her painted fists as if she were tearing them in despair and rage. "My son, my son! My sons are dead and you pollute the house of my fathers!"

"Your son willed me this house," Harry said, going over to face the portrait. "And I won't have you insulting his decision or my friends."

"Shame of my flesh! I have no son."

"Not anymore, you don't," Harry said. Then, on impulse, he added, "I miss him too."

Mrs. Black looked at him with staring eyes, but to his astonishment, she shut up.

After a moment, Harry closed the curtains gently and went back to Ron and Hermione. "I don't quite like splitting up here," he said, "even with the gloves." He took his pair out of his pocket and pulled them over his hands. "It's going to take an awfully long time to search otherwise, though."

"We can start with wherever you saw the locket," Ron suggested. "And maybe Kreacher's nest..."

None of the places Harry thought he might have seen the locket turned out to contain it, from the grumpy jewelry cabinet where it had been found to any of the remaining garbage bags they found. Kreacher's nest yielded only a great deal of dirt, insects, stains, and a material that Hermione, looking green, insisted on calling guano. Ron said he knew Kreacher was batty, but this was going too far, and in spite of his earlier caution about splitting up Harry found himself drifting away during the ensuing argument.

He tried one wing of the house where he hadn't gone before. A few bags of rubbish lay lumpily on the floor in a few rooms, but he didn't think they looked like very likely hiding places for the locket, really. He'd _seen_ the locket; it shouldn't have wandered off to another part of the house entirely -- though he wouldn't be too surprised if it had wandered _out_ of the house entirely. But why just move it?

Harry tried _Alohomora_ on a locked door, with a small and surprisingly unassuming plaque on the outside stating that it led to the "Trophy Room," and was a little surprised when the spell worked -- and then regretted it, as he stuck his head inside and promptly gagged at the smell. It wasn't exactly of rotting flesh, but it was moldy fur and closed places and something else ugly and disquieting. He pinched his nose shut to breathe through his mouth, which just made the back of his throat taste foul, and peered around.

It didn't look like the Hogwarts trophy room. There were no gleaming cups or plaques here. This was a room of hunting trophies, but the mounted heads and bodies looked strange... many of them appeared to have lost much of their fur, and that tall, furry thing, one of the few that was still furry, didn't look as if it had been mounted at all naturally; Harry wasn't sure if it should have been on two legs or four, but was fairly certain it couldn't have generally gone about twisted to the side and with its arm bent out sideways at the elbow. He moved a little closer and realized it was a half-transformed werewolf.

Harry went out and slammed the door.

He hadn't been up to Sirius's room much, but he knew where it was. It didn't look as if anybody else had gone there much since Sirius had died, either. There had perhaps been a few halfhearted efforts at tidying up, but there were a couple of Firewhisky bottles by one wall and the bed remained unmade. A large spider sat on one of the pillows.

Harry went over to shoo it away. It didn't shoo very far, only over to one corner of the room, near the drapes on the window. It appeared to have had a good haul in its silken net; there was even something only mostly wrapped up that looked rather distinctly like a doxy.

"Good job," Harry told it. He didn't go near the curtains. He did, on impulse, pull the bedcovers up straight -- and had to duck when a doxy flew out of them. Luckily there was only the one, and it crashed into the thick spiderweb, tearing it badly but tangling itself worse. The spider pounced.

Harry straightened up and lifted the pillow. His hand had slipped just under the edge to strike something hard and cool; he couldn't think why Sirius might sleep with the locket under his pillow, and rather thought he would have been more likely to have thrown it away, but perhaps Kreacher had chosen this hiding place...

It wasn't the amulet.

It was the mirror to which Harry had the mate.

Sirius had slept with _that_ under his pillow. Waiting.

Harry stared at it until Ron and Hermione came looking for him. Hermione gently tugged him away from the bed, out to the clear space in the middle of the floor; Ron picked up the mirror and handed it to him before they left.

When they got home, he went straight to his trunk and dug out the broken pieces he'd never taken out of it; he fit them together like a puzzle, cried, "_Reparo!_" and watched the fragments of glass and metal meld together.

Then he went downstairs and gave one to Ginny, accompanied by the story of how stupid he'd been. "I won't forget about it again," he finished. "If you want, you can use one to check on us... or if we run into more trouble than we can handle, we can use it to yell for help."

"I hope you aren't expecting to have to call for help from the Dursleys' this time."

A grin broke through the thoughts of Sirius. "Well, I can Apparate away now. Just not legally. And Ron and Hermione are coming."

"I could too, you know. Visiting your aunt and uncle isn't exactly hunting for Voldemort. At least, I hope not."

"Yeah," Harry said, "but do you really want to meet Dudley that much?"

-----


	7. Chapter 7: Hedges and Compost Heaps

Chapter Seven: Hedges and Compost Heaps

Ginny had not especially wanted to meet Dudley, at least not enough to try to get past her mother's suspicions that this would have a similar result to sending Fred and George back to the house on Privet Drive. Harry couldn't say he exactly wanted to meet Dudley again himself, but Dumbledore had wanted him to visit Aunt Petunia's home one last time before his birthday, so in late July Harry, Ron, and Hermione went alone, dressed as Muggles and with their wands concealed. It was after dinner, since Harry didn't particularly want to force his two best friends to watch Dudley eat. Having them come along with him against Voldemort was more than he could ever have asked, but there was no point making things more disgusting on _purpose_.

Harry plodded up the walk to Number 4, Privet Drive and knocked on the door. Uncle Vernon opened it, stared at the three of them with bulging eyes... and promptly slammed it shut again in their faces. Muffled shouting came from the other side.

Harry rolled his own eyes at Ron and Hermione, who looked rather miffed. "This is going well."

"Very rude, isn't he?" Hermione said.

"They put _bars_ on Harry's windows the summer before second year," Ron said darkly.

Hermione sniffed. "I thought you said they wanted to look normal, Harry."

"Oh, if you ask them, I'm at school at St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys," Harry explained. "They told Aunt Marge that when she came to visit, too. That would explain bars on the windows, right enough."

Hermione looked outraged; Ron was still smothering chortles when the door opened again, this time with Aunt Petunia on the other side of it. Both of them hastily rearranged their faces into less opinionated expressions.

"Hello, Aunt Petunia," said Harry. "I've come to keep my promise. We'll only be here for a little while."

"I suppose you'd better come in, then." She looked them over anxiously and peered up and down the street, as if expecting to see neighbors peering back in much the way she would herself, committing every detail of possible abnormality to memory. Then she eyed Harry and his friends again, with rather more perplexity. "Are these, er... you know... You look..."

"These are my best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Ron is from a very nice wizarding family, and Hermione is Muggle-born like Mum," Harry said pleasantly. "Mr. Weasley works in the government, and Mr. and Mrs. Granger are dentists." He hoped he was remembering that last part right. "Ron, Hermione, meet my Aunt Petunia. I suppose Uncle Vernon and Dudley are inside."

Aunt Petunia finally let them in, although she examined the doorstep before shutting the door. Dudley took one look at the new arrivals and went thudding up the stairs, but Uncle Vernon evidently felt that such a retreat was beneath his dignity and remained downstairs, looking blustery.

To Harry's surprise, Hermione stepped forward with a suspiciously bright false smile on her face and extended her hand. "How do you do, Mr. Dursley? I hear you work for Grunnings, the drill company. 'A bit boring, but never dull,' isn't that right? Or so the Grunnings representative from the dental drills division says..."

While Uncle Vernon was, in utter bewilderment, being drawn into holding forth on drills, Harry took advantage of Hermione's diversion, whether it was a sacrifice or her own peculiar sort of prank, and slipped with Aunt Petunia into the kitchen.

"I've got some things I wanted to say to you," he said slowly, putting a hand into his pocket.

"I suppose I can't stop you." Petunia picked up one of the dinner dishes and began washing it with stiff, jerky motions, watching him out of the corner of her eye.

"I don't suppose you have to listen." Harry waited until she set the first plate aside, then picked it up along with a dishtowel and dried it, hiding a smile at her shock and the wary look that probably meant she expected him to dash the plate against the floor and break it into pieces. He kept quiet until they were very nearly done, then began, "I suppose first I ought to thank you for taking me in. I know you never wanted to, or wanted me, and you certainly didn't love me. But from what Professor Dumbledore said, your agreeing to look after me kept me safer than I would have been otherwise, even if you did as little as you could get away with."

"You ought to be grateful," Aunt Petunia snapped, "for--"

"All the sacrifices you made," Harry said tonelessly, "and all the expense of bringing up a second child who wasn't even your own."

Aunt Petunia mouthed at him for a moment. "Yes. That."

"Somehow I don't think you spent much, especially compared to fattening Dudley up like a prize pig. But I suppose it can't have been that easy. So thanks, anyway." He dried the last dish, then his hands, and forestalled whatever Aunt Petunia had been going to answer to that by pulling a wand out of his pocket. But not his own. He laid it on the kitchen counter. "I found your sister's wand," he said. "Do you want it?"

"It's magic," Aunt Petunia said, staring at it.

"I know," Harry said agreeably. "That's sort of the point of a wand. She was good at Charms."

"She was good at everything," said Aunt Petunia bitterly. "It thrilled our parents."

"You said that one time before." Harry ran a finger along the smooth wood. "I don't mind keeping it. I just thought I ought to ask you."

Harry, true to his word, didn't stay very long. Lily Potter's wand, however, remained hidden amongst Aunt Petunia's cleaning supplies, as neither Uncle Vernon nor Dudley was likely to look there. Harry left it with mixed feelings.

On returning to the burrow, he was immediately distracted by a loud, in fact nearly deafening, and rhythmic croaking.

"What on _earth,_" Hermione said, wincing. At least, this was what Harry thought she had said. It was hard to tell.

It was also hard to tell where the croaking was coming from, as it was so loud that it was almost impossible to decide if it was louder in one direction than another. Ron and Hermione started casting about for it anyway; Harry headed for the house instead, plugging his ears, and indoors he found Mrs. Weasley and the twins shouting at one another over the slightly muffled din.

"We didn't mean to!" Fred was protesting.

"Well, you've done it anyway!" Mrs. Weasley yelled back. "Now UNdo it!"

"What did they do?" Harry asked, as loudly as he could.

"Cast a spell to amplify the croaking of every frog and toad in the area!" Mrs. Weasley glowered at her sons. "_And_ to set them all off at the top of their lungs. What they thought to accomplish by this--"

"We'll take it off," George broke in hastily, "if you'll just _give_ us a minute! And then we're going home," he added, scowling. "I mean, back to our own flat. And work on our new products there."

After a few minutes, the deafening croaking was gone, though Harry still heard it ringing faintly in his ears. He caught Ron and Hermione on their way in and directed them back out and away from the ensuing quarrel, meeting Ginny as she came around from another door.

"It's funny," Ginny said, "I can still hear that noise. And I think it got louder again when I came out."

Harry stopped to consider this. "You know, it does sound louder than it did inside..." He turned his head, trying to decide if there was a direction. "Maybe there's one toad still at it?"

They followed the sound, which grew steadily louder though not to nearly the same level as before, and finally tracked it to a spot halfway up a compost heap.

"I don't know why you're holding your nose, Hermione," Ron said absently, holding his own and leaning in. "It smells a lot better than half the potions we've had to make."

"Hey," Harry interrupted, having poked a half-rotted leaf out of the way, "look -- it's Trevor!"

At this moment, Trevor gave one last, loud croak and leaped onto Harry's outstretched hand, leaving behind a large, white, swollen-looking egg with a tracery of dark cracks on its surface. There was a soft crunching sound, and the egg shifted, one side of it bulging. A blunt, bright green object pressed outward and forced its way out into the air, bits of shell flaking away.

In sudden horror, Harry yelled, "Don't look! It's a basilisk! _Shut your eyes!_" He hoped they had all listened to his first warning, because he thought he heard himself hissing over the last words. His own eyes remained fixed on the egg as a rounded triangular head thrust its way free; he shut them hastily, but they popped open again in astonishment when he heard a small voice that did not belong to Ron or Hermione or Ginny say, "They're shut now."

A poison-green snake that could have crawled easily through the circle of his finger and thumb shook off the last fragments of eggshell. It didn't appear to have any eyes until Harry looked closer and saw that there was a line where each one should have been. The infant basilisk pointed its nose directly at him and flicked out its tongue, then said hopefully, "Daddy?"

-----

Mrs. Weasley was not thrilled about having a deadly serpent, even a very small one, brought into her home. The little basilisk found an unexpected (although, Harry felt upon reflection, he really _should_ have expected it) champion in Hermione, however, who had gone somewhat pale and refused to get too close but maintained that if the creature was obeying Harry so readily, it hardly seemed like an immediate threat. Crookshanks, on being recruited to examine it, sniffed the basilisk boldly from head to tail and did not purr, but didn't do anything overtly hostile either. He merely trotted off and returned with three pieces of dry cat food and a baby mouse. The basilisk asked Harry eagerly whether it could eat the food or if it belonged to the other large predator he wouldn't let her look at, and on being given permission gulped them down with great enthusiasm and reared up like a blind cobra to touch noses with Crookshanks.

They made a Floo call to the Longbottoms to tell Neville they had finally found Trevor. They didn't quite like to mention through the fire that Trevor had hatched an eight-inch basilisk who thought Harry was its father, but Hermione took Neville aside to break the news to him as soon as he arrived. Harry couldn't do it himself, as they didn't quite dare to leave the basilisk on its own.

Neville came through the doorway with one hand over his eyes and the other clutching Trevor protectively against his chest. Harry looked up at him and said, "It's all right. She's got her eyes shut."

"A snake has her eyes shut?" Neville asked dubiously, but he opened his own and came over. "Huh. Maybe it comes of being part chicken."

"I don't know." Harry eyed the serpent, which was currently sprawled as limply as a boiled noodle over his knee. There was a small bulge in her middle from the first meal of her life. "How much did Hermione tell you?"

"Just that you'd found Trevor sitting on an egg in the compost heap, and then you started yelling. And then hissing."

"That's about it." Harry frowned. "Hermione looked it up and said it must be a girl, because there's no sign of a crest. I suppose Slytherin's monster was a girl too, then. I'm sorry we didn't find Trevor any sooner."

"I'm sorry he went and hatched a monster!" Neville paused to look at the snoozing snake. "Though she doesn't really look any worse than a grass snake right now. They're good to have in gardens, you know. They eat pests. Not Flesh-Eating Slugs, those are a bit much, but other than that..." He trailed off. "Are you, er, planning to keep her?"

Harry pulled a face. "Well, she did shut her eyes. And it's a little hard to think of killing her after she started out calling me 'Daddy.' It's not like she's _done_ anything." He thought of Morfin Gaunt teasing adders and nailing them to the door. "On the other hand... what happens if she does open her eyes or bites somebody? I'm not Hagrid; I don't really want to keep a pet that could kill me by _accident_."

"Aren't Parselmouths supposed to be able to control snakes?"

"Well... partly." Harry looked up as Hermione and Ron came in with several glasses and two saucers of milk. "The first snake I ever talked to was a boa constrictor at the zoo. I don't think there was any controlling involved. He seemed nice, though. Actually that was probably the most pleasant conversation I'd had in months."

"You told us about that before," Ron observed. "Didn't you say it told you it had never seen Brazil?"

"Yeah. I, erm, made the glass disappear after that and let him out. It was an accident!" Harry added hastily. "He'd actually just been using gestures until then, mostly, but I definitely heard him say 'Thanks.' And then he pretended to try to bite Dudley and slithered off. I hope he got where he wanted to go."

"Right." Neville patted Trevor. "So... if you don't mind if I ask... what did she eat?"

"Crookshanks brought her a mouse." Harry looked down at the cat, who was busily lapping up milk from a saucer, and took a long drink from his own glass. "I suppose that means he approves."

"If you're keeping her," Ginny said, "she needs a name."

"I can't take her looking for Voldemort, though!" Harry said, setting the glass down sharply. "Even if she's all right for now, he could probably order her around... the way he ordered around Slytherin's basilisk." He frowned again. "Can't say I like the idea of keeping the same kind of pet as Salazar Slytherin, either."

Neville shrugged. "It's kind of creepy, but a lot of evil wizards have kept cats -- all right, not Kneazles, but cats -- and toads, too. And owls for that matter."

"It probably _is_ illegal, though," Hermione put in. "I'm quite sure basilisks are restricted creatures. They're certainly rated as very dangerous."

"I think I'm in enough trouble with the Ministry anyway. What's an illegal pet?" Harry eyed the snake doubtfully. "Ron, could you hand me my Chocolate Frog Cards? I think I left them by that chair... Maybe I can find a good name in there." He shuffled through them. "Bridget?"

"She doesn't look much like a Bridget," said Ginny.

"Well, I can't call her Herpo if she's a girl," Harry muttered, flipping through a few more cards. "Maeve?"

"The educator-queen?" Hermione looked intrigued. "Well, why not?"

"That still leaves the problem of what to do with her. Maybe I can just tell her to keep her eyes shut, never bite, and never eat anything that isn't given to her..."

"Well," Hermione began hesitantly, and then stopped.

Harry looked over. "What?"

"There _might_ be a way to transmit Parseltongue. I mean, to make someone else a Parselmouth."

"_What?_" Harry wasn't the only one who said it this time.

"It's only a theory, mind you!" Hermione said hastily. "But one of the, er, more _positively_ famous Parselmouths in history was Asclepius the healer, and the story -- which could be a legend, of course -- is that he gained the ability when a snake licked his ears out."

Harry regarded the basilisk, now named Maeve, dubiously. "Wouldn't that tickle? And why would a snake want to do that?"

"I've no idea," Hermione said. "But it, er, might also work with a Parselmouth doing the... licking."

Harry felt his eyebrows try to climb into his hair. "Might it."

"I don't know," Ginny said. "I'd think after last year I ought to be understanding her, in that case."

"Er, perhaps it takes a more sustained effort," Harry muttered. "That was more... nibbling, most of the time."

"I DON'T need to hear this!" Ron said loudly. Hermione laughed. Neville looked uncomfortable.

"It's probably just as well anyway," Harry said to Ginny. "It's just one more nuisance, most of the time."

"Oh, sure," said Ginny. "Especially when you find accidentally-hatched basilisks in the compost heap. It's really useless then."

"Well, still... you wouldn't want to just start... hearing snakes."

"Not _unexpectedly_," Ginny said consideringly. "This one seems friendly enough as far as it goes, though, and Crookshanks doesn't mind her. If you don't want to take her with you, I don't see where you could safely leave her that isn't here. And in that case it could be handy for somebody to be able to talk to her. It might be worth a shot."

The idea of licking Ginny's ears was _really_ distracting. Harry supposed Voldemort probably wouldn't be watching it... Well, that made all the excited butterflies in his stomach drop like stones. Still. Pretty ears.

"I'll even let Maeve do it, if that's necessary," Ginny added.

_Bleah,_ thought Harry.

-----


	8. Chapter 8: Now Where Are We?

Chapter 8: Now Where Are We?

The next couple of weeks were busy ones. The acquisition of an infant basilisk turned out to be fairly time-consuming, and the fact that she could already talk and move around merely meant that Harry had to instruct her meticulously on where she could go, what she should and shouldn't eat ("If you aren't sure, don't!"), and about how she shouldn't make noise or show herself unless she was absolutely sure that there was no one who didn't already know about her in the room. Maeve was surprisingly accommodating; Harry didn't think _he'd_ have taken the news that he had to keep his eyes shut all the time very well. He did, however, begin to find himself lying awake wondering whether in centuries to come he would be known as the madman responsible for hiding a terrible monster in what used to be a warm and pleasant family home.

On the bright side, they hadn't seen a single spider in Ron's room since Maeve had taken up sleeping there. And she could snap mosquitoes out of the air without looking.

In addition to the education of Maeve, Harry also celebrated his birthday, on which he received some very peculiar presents. Hermione gave him a book of Muggle fairy tales, which baffled him until he found that she'd marked one in which the villain had hidden his soul in a box somewhere, another book on exotic magical connections and interactions, and an instruction manual on the care and feeding of magical serpents and the useful properties of various venoms and shed skins. "And I got the oddest looks when buying it, let me tell you!" she told him. Harry supposed that this was useful, particularly as Maeve had eaten so much that he already had a few snakeskins stuffed inside a pair of old socks in his trunk.

Ginny's gifts were somewhat more normal, though they did include a box of owl treats "So that Hedwig won't feel too left out." Fred and George gave him a lot of Ice Mice, which Maeve proclaimed delicious and generously shared with Crookshanks. Harry supposed that this indicated a good temperament, which was encouraging.

He and Ron attended the summer Apparition Test session and were stared at until Ron was fidgeting and Harry's eyes ached from rolling, but they both passed. Ginny said she hoped the summer test would be a week or so later next summer, as she'd probably heard enough to pass it without the lessons by this point. Harry agonized over her birthday present and eventually settled on a hair-clip that looked like a Snitch, which kept her hair out of her eyes but still let it be tossed everywhere else by the wind of her flight.

And he spent some very enjoyable if somewhat guilty hours with her in his arms and laughing while he attempted to teach her Parseltongue by running his tongue around her ears in every way he could think of, though in the end they had to bring Maeve into it. Maeve said that of course this would work, although there weren't too many people who weren't already Parselmouths who were inclined to hold still while a snake stuck its tongue in their ears. Ginny made the most dreadful faces as the young basilisk did so; and her eyes nearly popped when Maeve asked if it had worked and it turned out that it had.

The idea of the locket that had been at Grimmauld Place nagged at him, though. When he could safely leave Maeve behind (although he took her along once or twice and let her admire the serpentine decorations), he went back again and again looking for it -- an easier process now that he could Apparate himself without attracting any awkward questions. Ron and Hermione were starting to think he should pursue some other method, or a different Horcrux, instead of turning Sirius's old house upside-down. The portrait of Mrs. Black had taken up having coughing fits whenever he passed it, and Phineas Nigellus would wander through nearby frames and tell him he was being foolish.

Harry straightened up on one of these occasions and asked in exasperation, "If you're so sure the locket's not here to find, does that mean you've seen it somewhere _else_?"

"I believe Mundungus Fletcher had pocketed it at one point," said Phineas. "Sirius should never have given him permission to carry off so many items. Particularly dangerous ones." He paused for consideration. "Or perhaps that was a different locket. It may have been put out with the rubbish. Perhaps you should try tracing that."

Harry swore at this and, thoroughly put out, pictured Mundungus and the locket and called out, "_Accio_ Voldemort's Horcrux locket!"

He wasn't really surprised when nothing happened except for the portrait sniggering at him. He _was_ surprised when, several minutes later, he walked by an open doorway and was tackled by a garbage bag. He wrestled with it, kicking it a few times and being poked by a number of pointy pieces of its contents, and eventually got hold of one straining knob that made the whole thing go quiet.

It turned out to be the locket, on a gold chain that had somehow ended up tangled with a withered Christmas garland.

He still couldn't pry it open. It didn't look broken. Harry went to find Ron and Hermione with the sinking feeling that both R. A. B., whoever he had been, and Albus Dumbledore had died for this particular Horcrux in vain.

"I've found it," he said, leaning around a doorway. He ducked as a pair of scissors escaped Hermione's grasp, eluded Ron's hasty grab, and flew past his head to embed themselves in the wall behind him. "The locket, I mean. It really does look just like the one Dumbledore showed me in the Pensieve." His scar itched. "I just wish I thought it were broken."

"It doesn't look broken," Ron said, frowning, "except for the part where it won't come open. How are you supposed to tell if you've got hold of a Horcrux?"

"I don't know," Harry said, frustrated. "It doesn't really feel like I'm holding a piece of Voldemort. I just recognize it as something he had, that Dumbledore was sure he meant to make into a Horcrux. I don't know who he might have killed to make it or how to destroy it."

"Well, what about how the others were destroyed before?" Hermione asked.

"I stuck a basilisk's fang in the diary," Harry said, "after it broke off in my arm. Fawkes had healed me already, and destroying the diary didn't actually hurt me. I don't know how Dumbledore destroyed the one in the ring, but you saw what that did to his hand." He frowned at the locket. "Even if a basilisk fang would work, I'm not sure asking Maeve to bite this would be a good idea."

"It's possible that a basilisk would be naturally resistant to some of the types of magic Voldemort used," Hermione said, "but I hope there's a better way to go about it."

"So do I." Harry frowned at it. "Maybe we'd better take it out of here, anyway."

Hermione scooped up Crookshanks, and side by side, they all three Disapparated.

Harry felt that the squeezing feeling was a great deal worse than usual this time, and halfway through the nonexistent tight rubber tube, he felt a wrenching jerk behind his navel as if he'd just grasped a particularly violent Portkey. He tried to reach out for Ron and Hermione, tried to pull himself back on course, though he couldn't think why he would be off it. There was a tearing sensation in his lungs; they begged for air, and fireworks went off behind his eyes.

Something seemed to slam into him, hard, striking him on the hip. Then, all at once, the crushing squeezing sensation was gone and he was gulping in air again. He looked around quickly through watering eyes and saw Ron and Hermione beside him, gasping too but safe.

Then he started to look around and pay attention to his surroundings, and he realized that they were definitely not at the Burrow. They were standing on a dirt path surrounded by boggy woods, eerily silent but for birdsong.

"All right," Ron said, looking around as well, "what just happened? And where _are_ we?"

"I don't know." Hermione looked shaken. "I don't recognize this place at all. Neither of you is splinched, I hope?"

Ron shook his head.

"I don't think I am," Harry said, "but I don't know what happened either. Unless Voldemort enchanted the locket to keep people from stealing it. But then wouldn't it have taken us... well... somewhere else? To him, or anyway not in the middle of the woods?" He pulled out the locket and looked at it. It didn't seem to have changed.

"We could have got something odd on us in the house," Hermione suggested doubtfully. "I can't think what, though. It's never been a problem before. But how could the locket make us _all_ Apparate to the wrong place?"

"You're the one who keeps reminding us it's impossible to Apparate on Hogwarts grounds," Ron said. "It could be something that affects everybody near it."

"Yes, but it's much easier to anchor something like that to an area than to an object," Hermione said distractedly. "Do you suppose we should try again to get home, or try to find out where we are?"

"Let's _not_ try that again yet," Harry said hastily. "It seems worth looking about a bit first. And giving our stomachs time to settle. Mine, anyway."

"It _looks_ safe enough," Ron said. "As much as a forest generally does, anyway. Doesn't seem like _his_ sort of place, somehow."

Harry thought of the Riddle house, and of the horrible graveyard in Little Hangleton. "Not really. Well... let's try up the path, I suppose." A pause. "Wands... not out. But easy to get at."

They started off, moving very slowly and watching carefully around them with their hands on their wands. Harry had shoved the locket back into the pocket of his jeans, and his stomach churned every time he felt it against his leg, which felt bruised. The trees looked normal enough; the woods breathed quietly, and the birds called to each other without seeming to feel any threat other than the three strange teenagers moving along the path. Even that didn't disturb them too much. Hermione let Crookshanks down, and after shaking out all four of his legs and expressing his distaste for the trip, the orange cat strolled along beside or around them with no appearance of concern -- certainly far less than he'd shown in the house on Grimmauld Place.

There was, however, a nagging sensation growing in the back of Harry's mind, aside from the worry of the locket Horcrux. He couldn't settle quite what it was, but he had the vague feeling that he _ought_ to know where they were, even while he was reasonably sure he had never been there before. There was something about the shape of the path...

While he was still trying to sort this out, they came around a bend and the forest opened out into a clearing. They all stopped short. There was a cottage on the other side of it, with smoke rising from it, and a large vegetable garden taking up much of the clearing; young fruit trees lined one edge, and a goat gazed at them and then wandered off. Aside from a stinking heap of manure and vegetable refuse off to one side, the whole thing looked fairly clean and well kept. Even the dung-heap was relatively neat.

It was the good condition of the place that caused Harry to spend several long seconds staring before he realized that the shape of the cottage and the ground and even the path through the woods matched, or at least resembled very closely, what he had seen in the Pensieve of Ogden's visit to the Gaunts' hovel. The clearing and vegetable garden hadn't been there, and the cottage had been much more closely surrounded by trees, and it did seem strange that someone would have cut down the hedgerows. The roof was thatched now instead of broken tile, which also seemed an odd change. Even so, the more he looked at the cottage, the more certain Harry became that it was the same place. Perhaps some eccentric person had bought the plot of land and fixed it up -- but hadn't Dumbledore found the ring there just within the past year, and said the house was a ruin? This would have to have been awfully fast work. And come to think of it, where was the main road? It had been close enough for Merope Gaunt to watch Voldemort's father ride by.

He turned to relay these thoughts to Ron and Hermione in a whisper. Halfway through his speculations, Hermione grabbed his arm and Ron said in a low voice, "We've got company, mate."

Harry turned back again and saw what he must have missed earlier, or rather who. There was a girl at the end of a row of propped-up beans. Her hair was brown and tied back severely, her dress plain, sturdy, and as green as the leaves, her face scrunched up and suspicious, and she held a hoe as if she was seriously thinking of hitting them with it if they were foolish enough to come within reach.

Harry decided that she was better looking than the Gaunts, not that this was any great feat, but evidently not much more welcoming.

Hermione took a cautious half-step forward, her hands spread empty in front of her. "Excuse us," she said, "we didn't mean to intrude, but--"

The girl in green interrupted, saying something in a language Harry didn't understand at all.

Hermione backed up again. "I'm sorry, I don't--"

The other girl frowned at them and spoke again, just as incomprehensibly.

"I don't suppose that's a language you know?" Ron muttered to Hermione. She shook her head.

Ron attempted pantomime, which involved looking around at the trees, scratching his head with a bewildered expression, and ending with an exaggerated shrug. This only succeeded in making the girl take several wary steps back toward the house.

Harry took one step after her with some idea of trying introductions by pointing, but as soon as he pointed at her, what he'd taken for a thick striped leather tie holding her hair back stirred and three serpentine heads reared up from hers like a weird tiara and hissed a warning in chorus. Crookshanks arched up and hissed back.

"She's got a Runespoor!" Hermione gasped, rather unnecessarily.

"At least if she's a Parselmouth you can talk to her," Ron murmured. "Or does it work that way?"

You could tell a conversation was going badly, Harry thought, when "Lay a hand on her and I'll bite you" constituted an improvement. Voldemort's unintentional and dubious gift of Parseltongue was turning out to be more useful than Harry liked, but at least it was better than being beaten with garden implements.

Fixing his eyes on the Runespoor, as he'd never yet been successful in speaking Parseltongue without looking at a serpent of some sort (or at least a picture), Harry began carefully, "We don't mean any harm."

As he heard the hissing issue from his mouth, however, the girl's eyes widened -- and instead of replying or even giving the Runespoor a chance to do so, she dropped the hoe and sprinted for the cottage door. She yanked it open and darted inside, slamming it behind her.

Ron blinked and said the same thing Harry was thinking. "That's a funny reaction for a girl with a Runespoor in her hair..."

"Perhaps we should go apologize?" Hermione suggested uneasily.

"I didn't say anything _rude_," Harry said, "and I don't see how I can apologize if she's upset that I spoke the only language we might have in common!"

"All right," Hermione said, "I suppose that was silly, but still--"

She broke off as the door opened again to reveal a man about Harry's height, with long silver hair and a beard over features lined and darkened by the sun. His clothing was also green, and while it didn't exactly look like a wizard's robes, the stick in his left hand was definitely a wand. He held it easily and stood straight, looking far less wary than the girl but quite definitely as if he would be prepared for any hostilities.

He opened his mouth and hissed. To Harry's ears alone, he said, "Good morrow, if you come in peace. You have found Salazar Serpent-Tongue. And who are you?"

-----


	9. Chapter 9: Slytherin's House

Chapter 9: Slytherin's House

Harry stared. Salazar Serpent-Tongue? Salazar _Slytherin_? He would have assumed the man was lying, or perhaps playing some very peculiar sort of joke, but the features _did_ look something like the monkeyish ones on the statue in the Chamber of Secrets, though the beard was shorter. And it might explain what had happened to the missing main road. But how and why could they have been transported a thousand years into the past? The locket had been Slytherin's, but Dumbledore hadn't mentioned anyone _else_ being spontaneously dragged across centuries for a visit as a result of handling it.

Would Voldemort arrange for one of his Horcruxes to travel through time? Was he even capable of a spell like that? What possible use would it be? Could this be Voldemort pretending to be his distant ancestor? But Harry's scar didn't hurt, and at any rate he couldn't quite picture Voldemort fixing up a nice little cottage and planting a vegetable garden. Nor did the girl really act like any of the Death Eaters he'd met.

"Well?" asked the man who had introduced himself as Salazar. He sounded impatient.

Harry realized that he had been gawking, and if this _wasn't_ some strange trick of Voldemort's, he probably ought to be polite. "We -- we do come in peace," he began hurriedly, and was for once relieved to hear it come out in Parseltongue, particularly as the annoyed expression faded from the older man's face. Looking at Voldemort had never had _that_ effect, but meeting this man's intense gaze did. "I'm Harry Potter." His hand went up to smoothe his fringe down self-consciously over his scar, but he changed his mind when he realized what he was doing and pushed his hair back from his forehead instead. "These are my friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."

The man -- Harry gave in and decided to think of him as Slytherin -- inclined his head to them gravely but didn't take his eyes off them. "And have you come seeking me, or by chance in your travels? I'm afraid I have given up teaching, but I can direct you to Hogwarts. Unless you want training in Parseltongue spells."

"We, er, that is -- excuse me," Harry said, feeling rather out of his depth at this offer. "May I stop and translate for my friends? They're not Parselmouths themselves, and none of us understood the language your... er... the girl..."

"My daughter."

"The language your daughter was speaking."

"Foreigners. Should we speak Latin, then?" Slytherin waved a hand. "Interpret, by all means."

Harry tore his gaze away from Slytherin to look at Ron and Hermione. "He says he's Salazar Slytherin."

"_What?_" Ron gripped his wand.

Hermione darted a nervous look at Slytherin and grabbed Ron's arm. "Are you, er, sure you understood him correctly, Harry?"

"I'm sure." Harry would have been irritated if it weren't such a bizarre thing to be telling them that he'd had trouble believing his own ears. "Well, actually he said we'd found Salazar Serpent-Tongue, but you said once that that was something they used to call Slytherin. I told him our names, and he said he didn't teach anymore but he could direct us to Hogwarts."

Hermione looked baffled. "He said he could direct us to Hogwarts? But... but if the school already exists and he's living away from it... and gave up teaching..."

"Why would he direct us back to it if he's already left?" Ron finished, as Hermione seemed to have bogged down in incredulity.

"I don't suppose _Hogwarts: a History_ said anything about his referring students after the split?" Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not even sure whether to believe it's really him. I mean, a thousand years? But he's being civil enough. I can't figure out how to answer him about why we're here, though."

"If it's a thousand years ago..." Hermione's eyes went distant. "That might explain the language that girl was speaking! Old English, maybe, or one of the other current ones..."

"He says she's his daughter, by the way," Harry said. "And he offered to speak Latin. I'm not sure that would help."

"Maybe later," Hermione said dubiously. "I know a lot of the roots, and I've had to _read_ old texts in Latin, but I'm not at all sure about carrying on a conversation in it. Oh, I wish I had a copy of _Beowulf_!"

"Beowulf?" Slytherin repeated the name in an interested tone; when Harry turned back to look at him, he continued in Parseltongue, "Beowulf's line became distant kin by marriage to my ancestors, on my mother's side, some time ago. And Helga Hufflepuff claims a more direct kinship with Wiglaf who stood by him against the dragon, at the last."

"We've, er... heard of the story." Harry relayed this biographical information, which caused Hermione to look at Salazar Slytherin as if he were an interesting book, and after another short consultation they decided that telling at least part of the truth was probably their best move. "As for why we're here... we did come by chance. Actually, we're a little lost, and not quite sure how we did get here. But we've heard of you and of Hogwarts." He hesitated. "We, er, didn't think you were still... exactly... on good terms with Hogwarts?"

Slytherin snorted, though he didn't seem terribly offended by the question. "No. Godric insulted my daughter, and that was the last straw for me." That wasn't the story Harry had heard. "But we made it the best place to learn magic," Slytherin continued, "for all its faults, and that hasn't changed. Particularly as I haven't been taking apprentices myself." Was that a glint of humor in his eyes? "Well, you look fairly fresh for travelers, but I imagine you'd like a chance to sit down. Why don't you come inside and tell me how you managed to get lost, and I'll see whether I can set you back on the right path." He glanced down at Crookshanks. "Bring your cat, if it can behave itself around serpents."

Harry smiled involuntarily at that, remembering Crookshanks feeding Maeve, but thinking of the little basilisk he'd left in Ginny's care reminded him of the one Slytherin himself had left concealed in Hogwarts, and _that_ reminded him to be cautious. Still, he couldn't think of any better course of action; if they were really back in the tenth century or thereabouts, Salazar Slytherin might be the only person any of them could actually talk to and understand within miles. Annoying him to go wander around in the woods hardly seemed like a brilliant idea.

So Harry merely said politely that Crookshanks seemed to be quite well behaved so long as the serpents were, and after he passed the invitation along to Ron and Hermione, they followed Slytherin into the little cottage.

It was dim inside, but the house looked much better than it had, or would, several centuries later. It had definitely been remodeled and updated at some point during the intervening centuries, but with the Gaunts taking care of it -- or rather not taking care of it -- the modernization hadn't produced any lasting improvement. Slytherin and his daughter didn't appear to be content to live in squalor and disrepair. Perhaps it came of having moved out of a castle.

At any rate, the stone walls were sturdy and vertical, and sturdy wooden doors closed off what Harry assumed were the house's other two rooms. While the thatched roof had been blackened by smoke inside, it didn't actually seem to have been burnt and looked as if it wouldn't leak easily. There was no glass in the window, but there were heavy shutters standing open and no dirt on the windowsill. Slabs of stone formed the floor, and there were clean rushes strewn across it. The room they had just entered still (or already) looked like the kitchen and sitting room the Gaunts had used it for, but was much more inviting. Poor Merope's grimy stove wasn't there, but there was a fire-pit in the center of the floor and something that looked rather like a kiln to one side of it. A wooden table with benches on either side of it took up a considerable part of the space, and the end of it nearest the fire-pit held several utensils, lined up in a neat row, and a variety of plant parts arrayed in a circle like the spokes of a wheel, though a substantial wedge was missing.

A cauldron simmered over the fire; Slytherin stopped next to it and looked in, then picked up a long wooden spoon from the table and stirred it. Apparently satisfied, he proceeded to one of the wooden doors and called through it. His daughter came out, with her hair braided back, partly hidden under a grey cloth that matched her cloth belt, and the Runespoor on her arm. She let the Runespoor down onto the floor, where it promptly slithered over to get into a staring contest with Crookshanks. Its three heads muttered to each other.

"My daughter, Jakinda," Slytherin said, then repeated the name without hissing it, presumably for the benefit of Ron and Hermione, before turning to the girl and speaking in whatever other language they were using. Harry thought he caught his own name and his friends', and wondered how Slytherin had managed to pronounce them so closely when he didn't think he'd actually said them except in Parseltongue.

"Jakinda," Hermione said. "That's a pretty name. Very unusual."

This prompted Salazar to explain with a note of pride in his hissing that it was, like his own, a name belonging to the people on his father's side of the family, witches and wizards and sorcerers and fierce warriors, who lived in the mountains between Gaul and Iberia and had given Charlemagne what for.

"Is your daughter not a Parselmouth too?" Harry asked curiously. He knew it was an unusual talent, but it still seemed odd, when even a thousand years later Slytherin's descendants had been chatting to each other in Parseltongue, that Slytherin should have to translate for his daughter.

Slytherin's eyes narrowed at the question. "My daughter is a Squib," he said, the words clipped and cold even in Parseltongue. "One word against her and you will go your way with no help from me."

"I wasn't going to say anything against her," Harry said, quite taken aback. "I haven't _got_ anything against her. I just wondered." He blinked and asked further, hardly believing it had occurred to him, "You didn't mean that's how Godric Gryffindor insulted her, did you?"

"Didn't I?" Slytherin let out a wordless hiss of disgust and contempt. "The last time we quarreled -- the last time we _spoke_ -- he turned the talk from whether we were wasting our time and resources on dealing with Muggle-borns to claiming it was a waste and a pity for _her_ to live at the school! That was enough, and more than enough, and would have been even if we had been able to agree on a bloody thing for the past decade. I resigned from my work there at once and brought her away with me."

"Er," Harry said, blinking. "I see." He was inclined to think that Gryffindor had been trying to say it _wasn't_ a waste of time or resources to teach Muggle-borns, and also that Slytherin was leaving out a good deal of the story. But perhaps this wasn't quite the best time to argue the point or to announce that his mother had been Muggle-born and so was Hermione, and they had both been able to best most if not all of their wizard-born classmates at magic. Besides, it seemed to say something that Jakinda Slytherin really was a Squib, and her father Salazar was protective of her (if perhaps, Harry suspected, at least a bit embarrassed), whereas Merope Gaunt had been bullied by her family until her attempts at magic all blundered into disasters, and then been mocked for it. He wouldn't have expected it of Slytherin. Maybe blood trumped magic (or the lack of magic), at least when the blood was his. "Anyway, I really didn't mean to, er, offend you. I'd just assumed she was at first when I saw she had a Runespoor in her hair outside. I suppose you set it to look after her?"

"He's better than a guard dog," Salazar told him, nodding decisively and relaxing a little. He looked down to the floor, where the Runespoor and Crookshanks had not started any overt hostilities but were still eyeing each other. The Runespoor's heads were taking turns. "Here, now. Be polite. That's a guest, and unless I miss my guess he's nearly half a Kneazle." This had presumably been addressed to the Runespoor, which gave a sort of serpenting shrug with the upper third of its body and made an elaborate bow to Crookshanks before sliding around to the other side of the fire-pit and coiling itself on a warm stone. Slytherin raised his eyebrows at Harry. "I'm surprised he hasn't been able to lead you home if you're lost; Kneazles are good at that."

"I think we might be a little out of his range," Harry said weakly. "I'm sorry. Might my friends and I have a little time again?"

"By all means." Slytherin pointed to the other end of the table. "Sit down. We've soup to prepare."

Well, it did smell better than most potions. Harry led Ron and Hermione to the free end of the table while Salazar spoke to Jakinda, who pulled a bright knife from the sheath at her belt and went outside. Salazar himself picked up another knife from the table and began chopping several purple roots, humming to himself.

-----


	10. Chapter 10: A Locket in my Pocket

Chapter 10: There's a Locket in My Pocket

"Is everything all right?" Ron asked in a low voice. "You look a little strained. He wasn't threatening you, was he? That hissing always _sounds_ angry, but there was one point I thought he actually looked it."

"I think it's all right." Harry took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then put them back on. "He thought for a minute I was insulting his daughter for being a Squib."

"Are you kidding? Jak--"

"Stop!" Harry said sharply. Ron gave him a baffled look. Harry shook his head. "Sorry, but -- try not to use names. I'm sure he knows we're talking about him, and he doesn't seem to mind if I tell you what he's said generally, but he can recognize those and I'd rather not give him more than necessary to wonder about."

"Of course not," Hermione said. "We show up dressed in outlandish clothes, none of us but you speaking a language he recognizes, and we don't know how we got here. I can't imagine what he could possibly be wondering about."

Ron gave a muffled laugh. Harry shot a nervous glance at Slytherin, who had indeed looked over at them but merely raised his eyebrows and went back to his root vegetables.

"Anyway," Ron said, "are you serious about his daughter being a Squib? He's a lot nicer to her than I'd expect of Sl-- of him. I'd have thought he'd be more like Thaddeus Thurkell."

"What, and turn her into a hedgehog?" Hermione glanced at Slytherin in her turn. "She doesn't seem frightened or uncomfortable around him at all."

"No," Harry said, "she doesn't. And Merope Gaunt wasn't even really a Squib, just too nervous to do anything right, and the way her father treated her..." He shook his head. "Anyway. _He_ says that the reason he left the school was that G-- er, our House's Founder insulted her for it."

"But that can't be right!" Hermione protested. "It _says_ in--" She checked herself before she could let out the name of the school, but Harry felt quite sure that there was no more question in Ron's mind than his what book she'd been about to mention. "And Binns didn't argue with _that_ part, even when he said that the Chamber of Secrets was only a legend -- and the Sorting Hat said the same thing! They argued over what students to admit, and Slytherin didn't want Muggle-borns, but the rest did."

"We know that, Hermione." Harry patted her arm. "I'm just telling you what he said. It makes a little more sense if you let me finish. He admitted they'd been arguing a lot. Something about not agreeing on anything for the past ten years. And he said they were arguing over Muggle-borns at the time. He thought it was a waste to teach them. He says our Founder said keeping his daughter there was a waste. _I_ think maybe ours tried to make him see he wasn't being consistent."

"And he wouldn't listen and took it all the wrong way," Hermione said, looking relieved. "That does make more sense. At any rate it seems to fit better with all our other sources, though I suppose they could be biased in... well, in one side's favor."

"You don't honestly think he's got it _right_, do you?" Ron demanded.

"Well, he was there! But for your information, no, as I _just said_, I think it's much more likely that Harry's right and, er, our host misinterpreted things. Though I'm sure all four of them did have their flaws."

"Probably," Harry agreed hastily, hoping to forestall any further derailment. "But can we try to figure out what to tell him? Or ask him? Maybe it _would_ be a good idea to ask about getting to the school, if we can do it without offending him."

"You mean if you can do it without offending him," Ron said.

"That too. Anyway, he offered to help us get back on track if we told him how we got lost, and _that's_ going to be a really awkward explanation."

Hermione pursed her lips. "Oh, dear. You're right. If we can't find out what effect the locket had, anything he tells us might not be any use... and if we show him the locket he might think we stole it."

"So offer to give it back to him," Ron suggested, "but warn him somebody's put nasty spells on it in the meantime before we got it."

"And explain who and what kind?" Harry asked. The door scraped across the floor behind him, and he twisted around to see Jakinda coming back in with a basket filled with greens and at least one turnip. She looked toward their end of the table and caught his eye; Harry tried offering what he hoped was a friendly smile, despite his worries, and was disconcerted when she nearly dropped the basket. She recovered quickly and smiled back, somewhat awkwardly, then tugged free a strand of hair that had come loose and been caught in a chain at her neck.

Harry had to jerk his eyes away and turn back around to avoid staring when the pendant attached to the chain was pulled out from the neckline of her dress. It wasn't a sure thing in the dim light or from a distance, but it definitely looked familiar.

"Well," Hermione murmured, her eyes following Jakinda, "I suppose he won't think we've stolen it if they still have it. But then we'd really have to give him an explanation of why we have it, or one very like it."

"Maybe we should just tell him the truth and see if he believes it," said Harry. "I'm starting to think that would be easier."

-----

They settled on the truth, with the amount and structure of this truth to be at Harry's discretion, on the grounds that he was both the one with the greatest stake in the story he'd be telling and the only one who was actually capable of telling it under the circumstances.

This left Harry with the unenviable problem of how to approach Salazar Slytherin with the notion that they were from a thousand years in the future and engaged in a war against his last descendant. Perhaps he could leave out that last part, but the first was bizarre enough that Harry was still having trouble believing it himself.

Harry considered starting out by offering to help with the soup, but he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to begin his story immediately after making a request that involved handling sharp knives. Instead he merely slid a little way down the bench toward Salazar, placing both hands on the table in plain sight. "I apologize for taking so long," he hissed, when the two Slytherins stopped talking to each other and looked up inquiringly. "We've been trying to figure out how," and whether, but there was no need to mention that, "to explain. You see, when I said we don't know how we got here... I mean we really don't have the slightest idea how we got here. We were trying to Apparate back to Ron's home." At this point he paused, as it occurred to him to wonder whether Apparition had been invented yet or not, but Slytherin merely looked at him politely and waited for him to continue instead of asking why he was making up words. "And... well," Harry floundered, "we obviously didn't end up there."

"I do have a few redheads in the family," Salazar said encouragingly, "but not, I am fairly certain, that one."

"Right. Well. We think something pulled us off track." Swallowing hard, Harry reached into his pocket and placed the heavy golden locket quickly on the table, then flattened his hands against the wooden surface again. "And the only thing different from the last time we'd Apparated was that we'd found _this_."

Salazar's knife stilled, and he looked from the locket on the table to the one hanging from his daughter's neck, though to Harry's secret relief he did not grab hold of it and drag her around. Nor did he do anything else violent. He did, after several seconds that felt very long, look Harry in the eye and say coolly, "Explain how you came by this."

"It was in my godfather's house," Harry said. "I'm honestly not sure how it got there. I do know at one point it had been bought from one of your descendants who'd... who was in hard times."

"It seems stretching a point to call any of my grandchildren _descendants_. Besides that, they were all fine as of the last news I had -- which was recent -- and moreover I only made one pendant anything like that, and I know exactly where it is."

Harry took a deep breath. "It's the same one."

Slytherin frowned at him. "You seem to be talking nonsense. Besides, the one you have is different. It's been divided, and it has hinges."

Harry blinked, thrown off by this. "It has your mark, though."

"So it does." Salazar drew his wand and poked at the ornate serpentine S on the locket; a green spark sizzled. "A genuine one, too. And yet, there are the changes, and there at Jakinda's throat is one I am quite sure is real." He nodded to his daughter and flicked his wand in her direction; she didn't flinch as the thin green spark stretched across the table to her necklace and then winked out. "So," said Salazar, "you appear to be having some trouble giving me your explanation, but I sincerely hope you have a good one, even if it is difficult. Out with it."

"We're not foreign," Harry said, as Slytherin's eyes caught his gaze and held it. He lifted his chin a little. "We're from almost a thousand years later than now. Maybe somebody did something to the locket -- pendant, I mean -- in the meantime, to make it a locket. I know there are some more recent spells put on it. But your descendants definitely believed it had been yours."

Salazar appeared to sink into thought for a long moment. "Rowena believed that time travel would be possible," he said slowly. "I never sought to try it, but I did enchant my daughter's pendant so that anyone who might attempt to kidnap her or to steal it should at once find themselves on their way back here... or to me, if I happened to be elsewhere. Apparition should have landed you practically at my door, if it worked at all, but perhaps coming across time -- which I was not expecting, but I did make the spell very powerful -- had an effect. Or perhaps it was the fact that Jakinda was still wearing it and safe here."

"You believe me?" Harry asked incredulously, before he could stop himself.

Slytherin raised an eyebrow at him. "Why shouldn't I? Are you lying?"

Harry spluttered. "Well, no, but--"

"No, I don't think you are. Your story is ridiculous and implausible, but it hangs together in itself and with your strange dress and speech, and I can see how my spells might perhaps have had the effect you describe." To Harry's surprise, Salazar's teeth flashed in a smile. "Believing your tale does require me to assume that I provided the enchantments with an impressive amount of power and made them to last much longer than anyone would normally expect, but I'm prepared to consider that possibility."

Harry grinned at that. "All right, then. I'm still confused about it myself, is the thing." He sobered. "I don't know how we're going to get back, though. And we do need to."

Salazar nodded agreement. "I'm sure you all want to get back to your family -- families?" He eyed Ron and Hermione briefly. "Yes, you mentioned Ron Weasley's home separately. I don't know how you'll do it either, and I can make you no promises," he said bluntly. "Still, if it was possible to come backward so far, it seems it may be possible to return. It is more natural to move forward in time, after all... just not quite so quickly." He began chopping vegetables again.

"I knew about people going backward in time before," Harry said slowly. "I don't know about jumping forward without living through it, though." The Death Eater in the Department of Mysteries had aged and de-aged... youthened? Harry didn't think he and Hermione had grown any younger using the Time-Turner, so perhaps that was a better fit... he didn't think any of them had disappeared and turned up later instead of jumping back in time to break again and again, but then, it would have been hard to notice and he'd had other things on his mind.

"You'd known of going backwards?" Salazar asked sharply. "Well, I suppose they must have learned something new in a thousand years. Were you developing new magic?"

"No. We... weren't finished with our schooling, yet."

"Schooling... apprenticeships? Ah. Where were you in school?"

Harry blinked at him. "Hogwarts. Where else?"

A broad grin spread across Salazar's face. "Where else, you say. Hogwarts lasted a thousand years, then, and it's 'Where else?' is it? Whose houses were you in? Mine, I hope? I hear they've kept it."

"Er," said Harry. "Gryffindor."

Salazar's face fell. "Gryffindor? _All_ of you? A Parselmouth!" He scowled suspiciously. "Are you still using that Thinking Cap?"

"The Sorting Hat?" Harry asked, startled. "Yes..."

"Hmph." It sounded more like "Ssssth," with a spit at the end. Salazar shook his head and got up to throw a handful of root vegetables into his cauldron, muttering. "I should never have agreed to letting him use his own hat. I could almost wish I hadn't left. Parselmouths in Gryffindor, indeed. Ah, well, you're probably all very loyal to it now." He turned. "In that case, what were you doing with jewelry that belonged to my family?"

"Well, most of my godfather's family was in your House," Harry began, though this hadn't really had all that much to do with it. Voldemort had taken the locket back from one of _Hufflepuff's_ descendants. Then again, the Blacks had produced more than one Death Eater, perhaps including the mysterious R. A. B. "Regulus!" Harry exclaimed suddenly, remembering the name of Sirius's brother who had backed out of being a Death Eater and died for it.

Salazar gave him a peculiar look.

"Er, sorry. I didn't -- never mind that." If he ever got back to that horrible tapestry in the Black house, he'd look to see if Regulus Black's middle name was on it. "Anyway, I was trying to find out about Horcruxes-- glk!"

Slytherin's wand was digging into his throat.

-----


	11. Chapter 11: Bankrupt

Chapter 11: Bankrupt

"Horcruxes," Slytherin spat venomously. "And I let you into my house." Ron and Hermione could be heard jumping to their feet, but Harry was between them and Slytherin. Jakinda, showing admirable nerve, held a rather large knife poised, with the firelight gleaming off it.

"I don't want to _make_ them!" Harry protested. "I want to destroy them!"

Some of the raw fury and disgust went from Salazar's face, but his wand didn't move.

"Harry!" Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Jakinda half-turn toward Ron's voice.

"It's all right," Harry said, an eerie calm falling over him, "he thinks I'm a Dark wizard."

"That doesn't sound 'all right' to me!" Hermione's voice was shrill.

"I'm telling him I'm not! Don't do anything. Sit back down." He turned his head as far as he dared. They sat. He met Slytherin's eyes again and hissed, "The wizard who killed my parents made six Horcruxes."

"That's not possible."

"It was new. He wanted to do something no one had ever done before, divide his soul into seven parts. I know he made at least four. He probably made all six. Two of them have been destroyed. One of them almost killed the greatest wizard I've ever known when he broke it. It left his right hand withered." Harry found himself shaking with rage as he told it. "The other," he said recklessly, "gave orders to the basilisk you left in Hogwarts so it Petrified Hermione and a lot of other students and almost killed me and Gin-- and my-- and Ron's sister."

Perhaps he shouldn't have brought up the basilisk.

Slytherin's eyes bored into him like bits of dark ice. "My basilisk. He should not have been able to give orders to my basilisk, not and have them obeyed."

Harry swallowed. He would rather not have said this with a wand at his throat. "He's your last descendant."

"Murdering Hogwarts students. Making Horcruxes."

Harry considered a variety of responses and settled on a simple, level, "Yes."

"You dare to tell me this?" Slytherin swore. "I can _see_ you're one of Godric's!"

"Thank you," Harry said evenly.

Slytherin swore at him again, with considerable venom.

Harry wasn't shaking anymore. "I had to kill your basilisk. I wouldn't have been able to say this until recently, but if it... if she used to be anything like the one I met a few weeks ago, I'm sorry. She wasn't talking about anything other than killing, though, and I don't think she would have listened to me. One of her fangs broke off in my arm and I used it to destroy that Horcrux."

"A basilisk's fang will destroy a great deal," Slytherin said. "It should have killed you."

As Slytherin himself hadn't killed him yet, Harry assumed this meant that it had been very unlikely for him to have survived, rather than that it would have been preferable if he hadn't. "There was a phoenix."

"Ah."

"He wanted souvenirs of the Hogwarts Four. Especially you. He's proud of being your Heir. He made a Horcrux of that locket, too. I need to find out for sure if it still is one, and if it is, how to get rid of it."

Slytherin stared at him. Harry stared back. The smoke from the fire was getting into his eyes. Then he felt something rub up against his leg and jumped, hoping it wasn't the Runespoor or something at least equally venomous.

A loud and distinctive purr rumbled upward and filled the small room, vibrating against Harry's right shin.

Slytherin's eyes flicked downward, and he finally lowered his wand, looking abruptly very tired. "Well, the Kneazle likes you," he said. "He wouldn't stand for you if you were a Dark wizard."

Crookshanks stopped twining around Harry's ankles and switched to Salazar's, meowing once loudly and then returning to his thunderous purr.

"If you were a Dark wizard," said Harry, "I think you would have killed me by now."

Salazar's mouth flexed in a humorless smile. "Don't take that for granted. Not all Dark wizards are so hasty. But even a part-Kneazle is generally a good indication." He leaned down to scratch Crookshanks behind the ears. Crookshanks stood up on his hind legs and dug his front claws into the seat of the bench.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you about it. But your descendant is. Voldemort is." The name, in Parseltongue, felt like a glob of sticky slime in his mouth. Harry wanted to cough. "He killed my family and he's trying to rule the wizarding world or destroy it, I'm not sure which. And..." He nodded at the locket.

"Horcruxes," Salazar said gloomily. "What detection spells have you used on it so far?"

Harry blinked at the abrupt transition to shop talk. "Er, none yet," he said with some embarrassment. "We'd meant to take it somewhere else first... the house it was in... there were a lot of Dark artifacts to interfere."

"We'll take it out after supper and examine it, then. I have considerable skill at getting around magical traps, but if there's to be any damage, I'd prefer it not be dealt too near." He paused. "And after that, I suppose I'll have to take you to Hogwarts."

"Er," said Harry, feeling that he must have missed something. "You will?"

"One Horcrux, especially far removed from its creator and with _my_ spellwork underneath his, I should be able to deal with. If you intend to find and destroy three more in your own time -- and end my line, which seems to have grown both crooked and disappointingly narrow -- you will first have to return to your own time. I can't do that for you."

"But you'd return to Hogwarts with us?" What _were_ they doing to history?

Salazar's smile was twisted. "How will you talk to anyone there if I don't?"

Harry blinked. "Good point."

"Talk to your friends," Salazar told him. "Meanwhile, I owe Jakinda an explanation."

-----


	12. Chapter 12: Unhinged

Chapter 12: Unhinged

Jakinda went whiter and whiter as Salazar relayed the conversation, which made Harry feel like a brute. Salazar had mentioned grandchildren already, but suppose Voldemort had been descended from Jakinda instead?

Harry only had so much time to watch this, however, as he had his own explanations to make. He was actually relieved when Hermione tugged insistently at his sleeve.

"What on earth," she whispered, "did you _tell_ him?"

"Everything," Harry said a little numbly.

Hermione blinked. "What do you mean, everything? Harry, why was he holding a wand on you?"

Harry rubbed his throat. "I told you, he thought I was a Dark wizard."

Her whisper grew shrill. "Well, what gave him that idea?"

"Hermione, take it easy," Ron said. "I'm sure he's getting there." The look he gave Harry added quite plainly, _You'd better be, anyway!_

"I am getting there," Harry said. "I told him I was trying to find out about Horcruxes. That's when he drew his wand on me. I reckoned getting into a fight over his _not_ approving of the idea I might be doing really nasty Dark Arts wasn't a good idea, so that's why I wanted you to sit down while I explained."

"Oh," said Hermione, "I suppose that does make sense."

"Thanks," Harry said dryly.

"So you told him you wanted to destroy them, not make them?" Ron asked. "It took an awful lot longer than that..."

Harry nodded wearily. "I did tell him that. And... I ended up telling him _why_. He knows about the locket. He knows about Voldemort. He knows that I killed his basilisk and used the fang on one of the Horcruxes. I told him Voldemort killed my parents and that I'm hunting him, and I told him Voldemort's his descendant."

"You told him you killed his basilisk and are trying to kill his last descendant who's gone completely mad, and this got him to lower his wand?" Ron shot the Slytherins a disbelieving look. "Did you mention the part about Voldemort not liking Muggle-borns? Because it didn't sound like he was any too fond of them either."

Harry thought back over the conversation. "I... don't think I got to that part. I told him Voldemort was proud of being his Heir and that he'd tried killing students, but not specifically that that was why."

Hermione frowned. "What do you think he'd do if he did know? Turn us out?"

"I don't know." Harry glanced over to where Crookshanks was now artfully making friends with a very pale Jakinda. "He and Crookshanks like each other. He was going on about Crookshanks being part-Kneazle, and Kneazles being good about not putting up with Dark wizards and about getting their owners back home when they're lost."

"Yes," Hermione said, "that's all in _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_. I've been fairly certain that Crookshanks was part Kneazle for quite some time now. He hasn't got the coat, but the body shape and behavior are very telling. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, for one thing," Harry said, ticking off points on his fingers, "he'll take a part-Kneazle as being at least roughly as reliable as a pure Kneazle. I don't know if that extends to human beings, but it's something." He put down a second finger. "He doesn't like the Dark Arts, at least not Horcruxes." Third finger. "I don't know if he's connected Voldemort's being his heir to the idea of being against Muggle-borns. I don't know whether he'd approve of that either, especially considering I could always tell him how Voldemort's been pretty hard on purebloods too. And not just 'blood traitors' either, the ones working for him." He looked at his hand, then folded his arms on the table and hunched over them. "I think I'll try not to bring it up until after we get to Hogwarts."

Ron and Hermione both stared at him. "I think you left something out, mate," Ron said. "We're going to Hogwarts? Not that it doesn't sound like a good idea, but..."

"He said he'd take us to Hogwarts. And interpret for us. At least, he said he was coming and asked how else I thought we'd be able to talk to anybody there if he didn't." Harry smiled crookedly. "He was talking about trying Dark-detection spells on the locket, too, to see whether it's still a Horcrux or not. I don't think he's happy at all, but he says he's going to help." He paused. "After supper. I suppose we must be invited."

"Well, that's good, anyway." Ron said. "Getting some help, I mean. Even if it is from somebody we really wouldn't expect."

"Yeah." Harry looked sideways again. "Well... maybe we ought to offer to help with the soup."

Salazar looked warily at Harry when he approached again, but accepted the offer and seemed at least a little pleased by it. Harry quietly translated instructions for Ron and Hermione; the purple things turned out to be carrots, and the soup was starting to smell very good. It was enough to make Harry start to feel hungry, anyway, though his appetite was muted by feeling bad about what he'd just told Salazar Slytherin. That definitely wasn't something he'd expected. He hadn't planned on telling Slytherin that much in the first place, but that had been out of caution, which he'd ended up throwing to the wind. Now... well, now he'd told nearly all the things he would have thought might get him in trouble with their host, and Salazar was still offering to help anyway.

Harry felt a little guilty about not mentioning the one last item that might change things... but then, if Slytherin would change his mind and refuse help over Harry's opposition to Voldemort's hatred of Muggle-borns, Harry rather thought he deserved to be taken advantage of. And if he wouldn't, then it wouldn't make that much difference to tell him a little bit later.

There wasn't a great deal of conversation over the evening meal. For one thing, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had searched through the house at Grimmauld Place from morning until quite late in the afternoon, and several Doxies had dumped a Chizpurfle-infested rag and an oozing Flobberworm into the very generous lunch Mrs. Weasley had packed for them, which had required giving Crookshanks a bath and completely destroyed everyone's appetites at the time. The Slytherins' cooking was quite good, and by this time they were all hungry. Even more than that, however, there really didn't seem to be anything to say. Or rather, there was probably a lot to say, but Harry couldn't think of anything he _wanted_ to say. Apparently neither could anybody else.

After the meal, however, Salazar asked Harry several more very brisk questions and then summoned him outdoors. Ron and Hermione followed without drawing comment, but when Jakinda started outside as well and picked up the gardening hoe, Salazar stopped and sent her back into the house. A faint iridescent glimmer washed over it as she shut the door.

"If anything goes wrong," Salazar said in answer to Harry's questioning look, "I'd prefer her to be as protected as possible."

There was plenty of light left in the evening as they followed the older wizard out through the trees. Salazar abandoned any semblance of a path very quickly, striding over damp ground and between tree trunks. He gave no sign of being bothered by the rise of a cloud of midges, which made Ron and Harry swear and all three students swat.

They managed to leave the biting insects behind, however, and in the end came out into a second, smaller clearing. All the trees were leaning away from it, and despite the sunlight that penetrated even with the long shadows of the evening, the ground was bare. It was also surprisingly dry and looked as if someone had swept the dirt with a broom in concentric rings, leaving tiny ripples in the dust. Or perhaps as if something had exploded in the center.

"Put the locket in the middle, there," Salazar instructed him.

Maybe something _had_ exploded in the center of the clearing, then. Harry leaned down and placed the golden locket carefully in the very innermost circle. As his fingers touched the dirt, they encountered something unexpectedly hard underneath it, and he brushed away a little of it to find that beneath the thick covering of dust and _almost_ normal-looking dirt was a layer of orange glass. Harry looked around, but Salazar was busy drawing a faint glowing line around the edge of the barren spot. Harry thought the trees leaned a little further away, keeping even their branches and leaves outside the circle. Salazar stopped beside Ron and Hermione to take them by the shoulders and pull them fully inside his glowing line, then stepped inside it himself. Pale turquoise-colored flames instantly leapt up all around the clearing, high overhead; Harry jumped, not only because of the turquoise flames but because a frigid draft of air had just whooshed upward around him as well. After a few seconds of crackling, the flames congealed into what looked like a very tall tube of ice. It felt like one, too; Harry didn't try to touch it, but the air next to it was very cold.

Harry stared upward. "What _is_ that?"

"Pardon?" asked Salazar, and Harry realized he had of course spoken in English.

"Sorry," he said, looking over at Salazar. "I asked what the... tube thing was."

"A shield." Salazar knocked on it; there was a hollow sound, but he took his hand away quickly and rubbed what looked like white frost off his knuckles. "It should help to keep any damage from spreading through the forest."

Harry's eyes widened. "What kind of spells are you expecting to find on the locket?"

"How should I know? You've told me of spells that somehow allowed a Horcrux to command my basilisk and that lashed back and destroyed the arm of someone you described as a very powerful wizard. I'd rather not take any more chances than are likely to be useful."

"Er, right. Makes sense." Harry went to explain to Ron and Hermione why they were all now surrounded by an enormous tube of icy green magic while Salazar did something to the locket that appeared to involve conjuring a large dome-shaped, dirty yellow sponge. Harry assumed this was another sort of shield, although he wasn't ruling out the possibility that it was a sort of cleansing spell for the removal of magical residues, designed by somebody with a really odd sense of humor.

When Salazar offered an explanation, it turned out the sponge was something rather like a one-way mirror, or a shield in one direction and a focusing lens in the other. Harry could see that Hermione was on the verge of bursting with questions at this information, but to his considerable relief she restrained herself from asking for anything other than a careful and distinct repetition of the incantation and wand motion, which were rather complex. Salazar instructed them to aim their Dark-detection spells of choice anywhere on the blobby sponge, which should both make them more sensitive and provide some protection in the event of any sort of backlash.

After several turns apiece (and several extra turns for Salazar), they had definitely confirmed that the locket was a Horcrux. They had also found a variety of relatively minor if unpleasant curses as well as identifying a few far nastier ones. Hermione had been able to disarm several of the lesser trap spells and had provided Salazar, through Harry, with a textbook-perfect description of a recently invented and particularly complex one that had allowed him to remove it artistically in a puff of blue smoke.

At last the locket was left with, aside from the bound fragment of Voldemort's soul, only the one primary defensive spell, stripped of its accessories, supports, and triggers, and what seemed to be a much simpler one holding it shut. Unfortunately, the two seemed quite inextricably intertwined and fused together. _Reducto_ had little or no visible effect, although the locket rocked a little underneath the onslaught and Harry's scar began to itch again.

"I think we'll have to risk setting off the spell _almost_ as he expected," Salazar said at last. "But only almost." And he produced a sort of ghostly hand, in a disturbing deathly greenish color, which followed the motions of his own. It extended into the spongy dome and picked up the locket; Salazar frowned in concentration, searching for a catch. About the time the sun was setting, he taught Harry the spell for the false hand, which came out in a cloudy copper color for Harry instead of greenish, and let him try for a while. Ron cast _Lumos_ so they could still see what they were doing; Harry watched the light glimmer on the golden surface of the locket as he felt at some mechanism that was surely the catch. His scar itched vilely, and sweat rolled down his forehead.

Under her breath, Hermione muttered, "Open sesame."

The locket's catch gave way, but Harry instinctively clenched his hand, causing the ghostly one to hold the locket shut -- because blackness like some sort of corrosion or mildew had run suddenly all along the ornate 'S' marking the locket as Salazar Slytherin's and erupted outward, ripping the spongy shield into pieces.

It was a shiny black serpent, with scales that looked like jagged metal and glowing eyes. Harry had never seen anything quite like it in person or in any book, although it had something of the same feel as Malfoy's _Serpensortia_-conjured snake. Its lower jaw gaped downward and it breathed out a dark, foul cloud. The remaining pieces of the sponge sucked it up, but Salazar said in horror, "Nundu's breath!"

Harry had no idea how Voldemort would have obtained and trapped the plague-spreading breath of the deadly leopardlike Nundu in a magical snake construct, but it was definitely a nasty choice. In sudden inspiration, he snapped at the creature, "Shut your mouth and hold your breath!"

Evidently Voldemort had neglected to make sure this particular construct couldn't be commanded by other Parselmouths. The gleaming black jaws clacked together, and it reared up like a cobra and then stood stiff and poised that way. No more clouds issued from it.

Salazar and Harry looked at each other. The older man's mouth twitched slightly at one corner, and then they both began to laugh. Salazar ordered the serpent to continue holding its breath but to eat its own tail, and it closed its jaws again over the tip and sucked itself down into nothing.

Harry used the false hand to thumb the locket open; it came easily this time, but there was a faint cracking sound. Both the clasp and hinges were broken. A desolate wail rose up from the pieces, setting Harry's teeth on edge; it was the polar opposite of phoenix-song, a purely selfish sound of mourning and terror, mixed together with sensations like fingernails on a chalkboard and teeth on a fork's tines and, if there could be such a thing, a lugubriously self-pitying Dementor.

At last it died away, and Harry unclenched the teeth he had been grinding together and massaged his aching jaw, dispelling the extra hand. "Are we done?" he asked.

Salazar jabbed at the pieces of the locket with his wand in an analytical way and then scooped them up and offered them back to Harry. "It's empty," he said, regarding the pieces sadly. "I've taken off the spells of my own that would interfere with your travels, as well."

"If... if you want them back, you know, I could leave them with you. They're yours, after all."

Salazar shook his head. "The one that belongs in this time is mine. This one should have remained with my heirs, but not put to such purposes. If it had come into your godfather's possession and was part of your inheritance from him, I suppose you have a more immediate claim on it than anyone else available. I don't believe I ought to keep it; there's every possibility that trying to leave it in this time, if and when you return to your own, would cause some sort of unpleasant interference."

"Oh." Harry put the pieces back in his pocket. He wasn't sure what he ought to do with them; they certainly didn't appeal to _him_ as a souvenir, however much the locket when whole had pleased Voldemort. "I'll, er, take care of them. Maybe I can get it repaired. That wouldn't restore the Horcrux, would it?"

"Of course not. Well..." Salazar frowned. "It certainly _shouldn't_, but then, I am not familiar with the possible consequences of having more than one of them. I'd have to give some thought to the theory."

"I won't do anything like that until Voldemort's defeated," Harry said. "I wouldn't have time until then, anyway."

"I suppose not." Salazar touched his wand to the shield around the clearing, and it vanished. They began walking back through the trees. "I'd prefer not to set out for Hogwarts until morning, even by Apparating. I don't care to try making this sort of explanation until after I've slept. The three of you are welcome to stay for the night; you can have..." He paused. "Are those two married?"

"Wait -- what?" Harry followed the direction of Salazar's nod. Well, there wasn't anyone else he could have been talking about, but still. "Ron and Hermione? No." After a brief pause, he added, "Not yet, anyway."

"Then you and Ron will sleep in my bedroom, and Hermione may share with Jakinda. Unless any of you would prefer the floor in the main room."

"That sounds fine. Thank you." Harry told Ron and Hermione about the suggested sleeping arrangements, which they didn't object to. They went around several more trees. "You said you had grandchildren, didn't you?" he asked Salazar.

"Yes. I have a son as well, with children of his own. Why?"

"I'd just wondered," Harry said quickly.

Salazar looked over at him. "You were thinking something you're embarrassed to tell me."

Harry flushed. "I wondered whether otherwise, the way you'd reacted to hearing about Voldemort, you might try to stop Jakinda from marrying."

"Try?" Salazar asked dryly. "But even if I could end my family line before it grows into your time, I would not. One madman, even if he is the last, is not reason for sacrificing a thousand years of worthier generations. There are always Dark wizards and madmen. Besides," he added as an afterthought, "according to Rowena's theories, it probably wouldn't work. History, she believes, is resilient. If it were possible to change what for you is history, you'd no longer be able to get back to your present -- though it might still exist alongside the other. And more likely it wouldn't accomplish anything at all. You might return to find that he'd been deluded about his ancestry."

"...I think he's deluded about a lot, but probably not that."

"Too bad. I'd prefer that idea."

There seemed to be little to say to this, but presently Harry asked instead, "Is Jakinda much younger than we are? Not that any of us are married yet, but you thought they might be, and I didn't think she was..." He had the general idea that remaining unmarried had been unusual at the time, even for a witch.

"You're, what, about seventeen years of age?" At Harry's nod, Salazar sighed. "So is she. Old enough, though with a wizard father she'll have somewhat more leeway before she's considered too old. I'm not sure what to do about a husband for her, though. I hate the thought of letting her go to a Muggle -- she's used to the conveniences of magic, even if she can't perform it, and they don't _bathe_. Much." He grimaced. "But too many wizards, even if they'd look at a Squib, would mistreat her, and I wouldn't be there..." He looked sharply at Harry again. "What, were you interested?"

"Me?" Harry nearly yelped, which was difficult in Parseltongue. "No, I--" He was caught between not wanting to sound as if he'd been having prurient thoughts about his host's daughter and not wanting to sound as if his _not_ having them was because she was a Squib. "There's a girl," he said, "back... forward... er, home. I was thinking of her, I mean of asking her, if I survive the fight." Eventually. It might be just as well Ron couldn't understand this conversation. "Anyway, my mother was Muggle-born." He hadn't been going to bring that up. Oh, well, now that he _had_... He added challengingly, "Brilliant, mind, and the head of Slytherin House at the time kept telling her she should have been one of his, but I shouldn't think you wanted a half-blood."

"Aah... for a Squib daughter, I could do worse," Salazar said with a shrug. The cottage, lit from one window, was coming into view through the forest, and Salazar quickened his steps so much that Harry, trying to keep up, nearly ran into a tree. "Aside from your being out of your own time, that is, which is a rather substantial obstacle. But if there's already someone you mean to get back to, it would be a moot point anyway. And now..." They stepped into the clearing, dodging around an obstinately stationary goat. "It's time for bed."

Jakinda was waiting anxiously and met her father with a glad cry of relief, presumably pleased that he had returned in one piece. Everything in the cottage appeared to have been cleaned and put in order while they were gone, and what had been rather too warm before (since this summer was anything but unseasonably cool, and having a fire going had been a bit much) was now much more comfortable, if a little smoky. Hermione and Crookshanks disappeared into Jakinda's room; Harry and Ron insisted on taking the floor instead of Salazar's bed, and they rolled up in light blankets. Despite the hard surface, Harry, at least, was tired enough to fall asleep within minutes.

-----


	13. Chapter 13: Hogwarts, Historical

Chapter 13: Hogwarts: Historical

Salazar roused them all before sunrise for a very quick breakfast involving some type of porridge and the remains of the vegetable soup. He finished eating and got up again before anyone else, gently pushing Jakinda back down when she started to get up as well and telling Harry (and presumably her too) that they should all finish eating and stay out of the way.

Harry thought he might recognize the wand motion from when Dumbledore and Slughorn had cleaned up the effects of Slughorn's attempt to pretend he had been attacked by Death Eaters. The effects weren't quite the same, however. For one thing, as the Slytherins' little cottage was relatively orderly to begin with, the results were necessarily less dramatic. Even so, the soup bowls that had been drying overnight stacked themselves neatly and put them away, things could be heard scraping across the floor and making flapping noises, and a cupboard opened up to allow several perishable potions ingredients to whisk themselves out and discard themselves variously out the window or into the fire. Even the rushes on the floor and the roof thatching rustled softly, straightening themselves as if brought to attention.

Salazar looked up at the roof and made a rueful comment, repeating it politely for Harry, that it was too bad they hadn't had any honeybees in the eaves this year. Jakinda said something Harry rather suspected of being cheeky, from the look her father gave her, particularly as he thought he heard the name "Helga" in it.

Last of all, the fire went out and the now-empty breakfast dishes cleaned themselves, by magic instead of water, and joined the soup bowls.

"That's a good spell," Hermione murmured, watching.

"That spell would almost make Aunt Petunia want to be able to do magic," Harry said. "I've seen one like it before. Dumbledore and Slughorn used it to clean up after Slughorn ransacked his own house."

"You needn't bother telling your Aunt Petunia, actually," Ron said. "It isn't easy, and it doesn't work very well for everyday, at least not all by itself. Kind of like how you can clean clothes by magic but if you don't use soap and water at least once in a while they start getting sour." His ears went a bit red at the look Hermione was giving him. "What? Mum taught us a lot of household spells even if we couldn't use them yet. I think she was convinced we'd all move out and learn the one about laundry the hard way."

The Slytherins went briefly into their respective rooms to emerge with small bags, perhaps large enough for a change of clothes apiece. Salazar led the way outside and then paused to look at them all thoughtfully. "Do you suppose," he said to Harry, "that you would know the spot I want to go if I described it to you?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "I don't know how much things have changed. And I thought we couldn't Apparate into Hogwarts?"

"No, but we can Apparate quite near to it. Whether I can still just walk in after that is another question, but it would probably be safer to wait at the gates."

"Are the statues of winged pigs there yet?" Harry asked.

Salazar laughed softly. "Everyone told us we'd succeed in building a school when pigs flew. Yes, they are."

A little more discussion allowed them to be sure that no one had actually moved the Hogwarts gates, or the path to them, and they settled on an Apparition point across the lake, although Salazar said there wasn't a dock there.

Harry tried very hard to picture the lakeshore without the dock and boats that the new first-years took across for their first approach to Hogwarts. He also tried to put out of his mind the crushing, wrenching sensation of his last Apparition, and pivoted into the usual darkness and intense pressure.

Light and air burst around him again, and he yelled, because his legs up to the knees were plunged into cold water with a splash. Looking around, he discovered that he, Ron, and Hermione had all arrived several feet offshore, thankfully in an area where the bottom of the lake sloped off fairly gradually. Salazar and Jakinda were looking at them from shore with expressions of surprise.

"I think the shoreline must have shifted," Hermione said rather breathlessly, and all three of them waded back up onto dry land.

It was cooler here, but even at dawn the day was still warm enough that their clothes had time to dry most of the way as they walked around the lake and up toward the school. Clouds scudded across the sky, but the sunlight that came through them was warm.

Hogwarts looked different. There was at least one tower missing, possibly a wing, and the stone walls were lighter in color. Harry thought the Forbidden Forest crowded closer on the other side, though he couldn't be sure. But the winged pigs stood tall... well, squat... and proud on either side of the gates.

Salazar walked up and pounded on the gate with his fist; Harry didn't expect this to be especially effective, but to his surprise, the metal rang like a gong.

Salazar waved the rest of them a few steps back, told them to keep still and not interfere, then folded his arms and waited.

After some time, the gates swung slowly open, revealing a wizard dressed in a red so dark it was nearly black, with grey hair that still had a few threads of brown. Harry felt certain that this must be Godric Gryffindor; the ruby-studded sword hilt at his waist only reinforced the impression. This new wizard looked over their party swiftly, with a gaze that Harry felt was drilling into him, then met Salazar's eyes.

"Salazar?"

"Godric."

They glared at each other.

Then, to Harry's shock, Gryffindor drew his sword. The blade flashed in a bright sweeping arc, too fast for Harry to think of doing anything, and ended with the tip a breath away from Salazar's throat.

Salazar hadn't moved or flinched. Now he arched an eyebrow, lifted a hand, and ran two fingers along the edge of the sword's blade, which remained perfectly steady. The sword looked sharp enough to Harry that this should have cut Salazar rather badly, as he applied enough pressure to dent the skin heavily inward, but he showed a bloodless hand, and Godric lowered the blade and sheathed it again. They spoke briefly -- Salazar stiffened at one point when Godric looked toward Jakinda, and Godric looked downright astonished at one point, but Harry couldn't decide what else their tones and expressions meant, except that they were more cordial or at least more polite than Snape had been when greeting him and Tonks at the gate. Then again, this wasn't difficult. That drill-bit gaze rested for a slightly longer time on Harry and each of his friends, and then Gryffindor turned and beckoned them all to follow him in.

Godric didn't start or even look around when Salazar turned to Harry and hissed, so Harry supposed that at least part of the conversation had involved the information that there was to be some necessary interpretation through Parseltongue.

"Don't look so shocked," Salazar said. "I suppose I should have warned you..."

"That Gryffindor was likely to draw his sword on you if you showed up again?"

"I did say I never intended to return to Hogwarts. I'd have been disappointed if he had not taken precautions -- I wouldn't move against the school, but someone might, perhaps, try to impersonate me." Salazar's eyes glinted. "I will tell you, though, I was tempted to twit him about lacking confidence in his Legilimency. It's not as if I even tried to block him."

"He's a Legilimens?" For some reason, this wasn't a talent he'd have expected of Godric Gryffindor.

"Of course he is. You didn't know that?"

Harry shook his head. "If he knew what you were thinking, why the sword? And why didn't it cut you?"

"As a second test. Has so much been forgotten? Godric's blade will only cut the wielder's true foes, and those it cuts deep -- I'm almost insulted that he stopped his strike." Salazar smirked. "And it's picky about its wielders. Perhaps it's been lost, in your time?"

"No," Harry said, "it's safe. It's in the Headmaster's office." A thought occurred to him. "But what if there were a reason you had to cut somebody who wasn't your enemy? Or yourself?" Blood on the stones at that cave of Voldemort's. "Like... er..." Some other reason. "Snakebite?"

Perhaps snakebite hadn't been the best suggestion, as Salazar didn't seem likely to have that particular problem. He gave Harry a puzzled look. "Leaving aside your wand," he said, "that would be one of the many reasons that most people also carry a knife."

They passed through the doors into the castle, and Harry was left blinking and trying to get his eyes to adjust to the sudden shadows. He looked back quickly to make sure Ron and Hermione were still there. Salazar had dropped back momentarily to take hold of Jakinda's hand, though she didn't really look to Harry as if she needed the guidance.

They passed by the doors to the sunlit Great Hall, climbed two flights of stairs, jumping over the thirteenth step on the second, and walked through what appeared to be a tapestry covering solid wall to reach a passageway. They passed no one along the way -- according to Salazar, they'd arrived in time for the students to be distracted by breakfast. They ended up in what Harry thought might be the staff room, eventually, and Godric left them there only to return after several minutes with two witches. One, presumably Rowena Ravenclaw, wore deep blue and looked as if she had probably, with no hint of inappropriate behavior, distracted generations of male students. The other wore simple black and had her sleeves pushed up; though considerably shorter and much less sullen, she nevertheless gave Harry the impression that she could have outwrestled Millicent Bulstrode. She went directly to Salazar, hugged him around the ribs, and then seized him by the upper arms and shook him.

There was some laughter at that and a short period of snappishness, which ended in Godric bowing to Jakinda and offering what Harry gathered was a formal apology, though Salazar still looked grumpy afterward. Then they settled into a very long discussion of which Harry understood very little. He supposed this must have been how Ron and Hermione felt during his Parseltongue conversations with Salazar, although now Hermione was watching and listening intently, and occasional flashes of comprehension crossed her face.

Harry was just beginning to wonder if Salazar had forgotten about them when he turned around to offer a summary. "If you're willing," Salazar said, "to stay here while we work on it, Rowena thinks it will be worth trying to create a spell that should return you to your own time. If we can be sure of the precise dates, it would help, but it seems likely that we should be able to land you either at the time you left, or with no greater interval than the amount of time you spend here."

"You think... you can do it?" Harry asked. "Just like that?"

"We couldn't have sent someone ahead on a whim, or only to try it. But with you here, with this as your past... which becomes stranger the more thought I give it... we have something to aim for." Salazar sighed. "And it seems to be important."

"It is," said Harry. "I did hate to tell you, though."

"Why? Because it was painful to hear, or in case I favored my descendant enough to overlook his methods... and his attacks on my school?"

His school? "Yes," Harry said honestly. "I wasn't planning to tell you too much in case you would be on his side, but since you weren't, I was sorry it was painful."

Salazar snorted. "You're too honest," he said, "particularly after the fact. But we would have found out eventually, so long as I brought you here, and I think I prefer to have known sooner than later."

At this point Godric interrupted them; the Hogwarts Four had work to do, or at least three of them did, so the meeting broke up for much of the rest of the day. Harry and his friends were sent to guest quarters, and Salazar vanished into the depths of the castle to prepare a place for the experiments.

Hermione had been given a separate room, but she quickly turned up in theirs. "I can't believe we're actually here," she said. "Hogwarts!"

"We've been here lots of times," Harry pointed out. "Six whole school years."

Hermione made a face at him. "But here! Now! When it's just beginning! Well, I suppose it's been Founded for quite some years now, but still... with the Founders still alive."

"Yeah," said Ron. "It's too bad the only one any of us can actually talk to is Slytherin."

"He's not so bad," Harry said. "I think he's even sort of made up with the rest of them, just now."

"Sure, but I'd rather be able to have a chat with Gryffindor. Or even Hufflepuff. And I bet Hermione would talk to Ravenclaw and forget to leave..." Ron laughed. "Maybe it's just as well, huh?"

Hermione looked prim. "You might want to be careful of how you talk about Helga Hufflepuff. She struck me as very formidable. And as a matter of fact, I think I just may be able to talk to them if I try hard enough... or at least write notes back and forth."

"I thought you said you couldn't carry on a conversation in Latin," Harry said.

"Well, no, not exactly. Definitely not right off. But designing a spell to send people forward in time by a thousand years can't be all that easy, so I imagine we'll have to stay here for some time. I don't know how long, really, but I'm certainly going to _try_ to pay very close attention and work out as much of it as I can. And it's not all Latin; a great many of the texts in Ancient Runes are in Old English or are annotated in Old English. I think we can't have been getting the pronunciations right, and of course they speak much faster than we ever did in lessons, but I do think I was beginning to catch bits, here and there."

"Huh." Ron looked impressed. "Looks like Ancient Runes is good for something after all."

Hermione huffed. "I've been telling you that all along, you know. I wonder if Arithmancy is how they're going to design the spell? It's _one_ of the methods--"

"I thought Arithmancy was the magical properties of arithmetic," Ron interrupted, grinning.

"Arithmetic is magical?" Harry asked dubiously. "They teach it in Muggle primary school, you know."

Hermione put a hand over her eyes. "Neither of you ever once listened when I told you about my Arithmancy lessons and what I was studying, _did_ you?" When neither of them answered, she parted her fingers and peeked between them.

Harry and Ron were both shaking their heads.

Hermione took her hand down and sighed deeply. "You two... It's only partly arithmetic. And some people think it's just Divination with numbers, but that's not true either... well," she admitted, sounding put out, "that _is_ included. That's technically what the term means, in fact. But it's a misnomer really. It starts with the magical properties of numbers, and then you move on to more extensive and intensive analytical techniques in the advanced courses. And one of the things you can do with it is predict the results of a spell, but it's _not_ Divination; it's more like... physics." At Ron's blank look and Harry's rather fuzzy one, she sighed again. "You work the spell out in numbers and equations instead of magic so that you can find out if it'll blow up or do something else disastrous without actually causing a disaster. Anyway, the second NEWT-level course actually does address Arithmantic spell design. I was really looking forward to that..."

"You didn't have to come with me and miss it, you know," Harry said.

"Oh, Harry -- I didn't mean -- you know I didn't -- this is much more important, I only--"

"It's all right!" he interrupted, trying to head off the tumble of apologies. "I can't see what's so great about it, but I knew you'd be looking forward to getting buried in homework again. You really _didn't_ have to give it up. But I was glad to have you both with me, anyway." Harry paused to look around the room. "Of course, we weren't even supposed to be back at Hogwarts yet if things were normal. I'm pretty sure you didn't sign up for a trip back in time... _this_ year. I know I didn't!"

Hermione laughed at that, if a bit reluctantly. "No... that really must have been a very potent spell on the locket."

"Salazar must have been really worried about his daughter," said Harry.

"When you said you thought he made up with the rest of them," Ron asked, "where are you getting that, exactly? I'm thinking if it ever said anything about _that_ happening in _Hogwarts: a History_, Hermione would have told us about it around the time the Sorting Hat started telling us to make nice."

"I don't know what it says in _Hogwarts: a History_," Harry began.

Hermione broke in with, "You really ought to read it, you know!"

"Well, I'm not likely to find a really up-to-date copy here, am I? But the point is, I'm not talking about history books, I'm talking about what I saw. Godric Gryffindor apologized to Jakinda -- at least, I think he did. And they got down to business after that."

"I thought you reckoned Gryffindor wasn't really in the wrong," Ron objected.

Harry shrugged. "Maybe he said he didn't mean it the way it sounded. I couldn't understand that part, and Salazar didn't mention it afterward."

"That's definitely not in any of the history books," said Hermione. "As a matter of fact, I don't think any of them even mention Salazar as being in contact with the other three Founders after he left. He just... dropped off the face of the earth." She slid off the end of Ron's bed and went over to the wall, where she began drawing thin bright lines with her wand.

"What are you doing?" Ron hopped up as well and joined her, peering over her shoulder as she marked a colon and began writing in neat script.

"I'm going to review as much Latin and Old English as I can from memory, and any of the runes that I think might be useful here. I'll tell you all of them, if you like."

Hermione was still writing in blazing light when Helga Hufflepuff appeared, sometime around what might have been midday, and left them a light lunch of hard brown bread, very sharp cheese, a thin soup whose flavor Harry couldn't place, and ale. Hermione ate bread and cheese with considerable effort and little attention (or she might have noticed that Ron and Harry had an easier time after soaking their bread in the soup), and when Ron put a mug of ale into her hand, she took a gulp without paying attention and promptly choked, spraying half of it onto the wall.

She was also still writing, though her markings had dimmed to something a bit easier to read and she had cleaned up both the wall and herself, by the time Salazar came to their door again. Harry let him in, feeling rather relieved; he didn't mind one bit that Ron and Hermione were on good terms at the moment, but he didn't really feel like adopting Ron's method of making language lectures more interesting. It appeared to involve breathing down Hermione's neck. Hermione didn't seem to mind very much, but Harry rather thought a third would make things a bit too crowded. And no matter how useful it might be to take a crash course in current language, he couldn't seem to concentrate on this one.

Salazar gave the writing on the wall a long and questioning look before turning to Harry. "The chamber is ready," he said, "and we've put a dinner for you down there. It's a bit late, and we regret keeping you cooped up like this all day... though you do seem to have found a way to amuse yourselves... but we've not yet settled how to explain you to the students." He watched Ron and Hermione round a corner and begin a new column. "I suppose I should say _they_ have not settled... I'm not sure they've settled how to explain _me_ to the students yet, either. Perhaps I'll simply keep busy. Any renewed debates I might provoke can, I think, safely wait until we've sent you off."

"Isn't anyone likely to see us on the way to the chamber?" Harry asked.

Salazar grinned. "Oh, come now. Surely you've found _some_ of the secret passages after a few years at Hogwarts... but you don't think you know all of them, do you?"

They left Hermione's vocabulary revisions sparkling on the walls and set out. Salazar took them into a strange round passage that seemed to wind ever and ever downward through a muffled sound of rushing water. The floor looked fairly clean, as far as Harry could tell in the dim light, but it was very slick.

"Where's this chamber we're going to, anyway?" Harry asked, trying to keep his feet from sliding out from under him or carrying him even faster down the tunnel than the rapid pace Salazar was setting. "It seems like we'd have to be really deep under the castle by now..."

"It's under the lake," Salazar said.

Harry stopped in his tracks at that, or tried to. His feet continued blithely down the slope without him, and he landed with a bump. Ron and Hermione started forward to try to help and managed to tumble over him _and_ trip Salazar, who had not previously appeared to have any trouble with the footing.

They managed to pick themselves up and resume, if with a certain amount of swearing from some parties and glowering from Hermione. She even almost glowered at Salazar, even though he had politely confined himself to swearing in Parseltongue, which to anyone who wasn't a Parselmouth probably sounded about the same as _not_ swearing in Parseltongue. By the time they were on their way again, Harry had almost convinced himself that "under the lake" could mean anything.

Then they reached the serpent-jeweled doors, which Salazar pushed instead of commanding to open, and walked into a large room where a basilisk, easily twelve feet long, reared up with its eyes shut and then hurled itself at Salazar, wrapping around his shoulders. Harry would have been more alarmed by this if not for two reasons: first, the basilisk's hissing translated to something along the lines of "You're home, you're home, hurrah!"; second, while the enormous statue of Salazar himself was missing, he had been here before.

"But this is the Chamber of Secrets!" he burst out, then looked at Salazar and the snake again and repeated it.

"Is that what they call it in your day?" Salazar asked with some interest, wrestling his basilisk into a sort of hug and scratching the top of its head.

"It's -- well, yes. Only everybody thought it was a legend for the longest time, and... you've got everybody down here!" Indeed, the other three Founders were gathered at one side of a round table with space for four more. There was food on the table, but it appeared untouched and had been pushed aside in favor of a large, thin slate.

Salazar looked at him oddly. "Yes...? It seemed like a good spot. Plenty of room -- this could be a bulky spellcasting, depending on what turns out to be required. And the students don't know about it. Why do _you_?"

"This is where you keep the basilisk..."

"Obviously," said Salazar. The basilisk flicked its tongue out in Harry's direction.

"It's where Voldemort... it's where we fought. The Horcrux that was using..."

"Ah." Salazar winced and let the basilisk down. "Well... allow me to introduce Urraca. I suppose she probably won't remember you when you meet again."

"Of course I will," said Urraca indignantly. "I have a good memory." She didn't really sound much older than Maeve. Perhaps she was just excited.

Salazar scratched her head again. "Sshh."

"Er, sorry," Harry said. He supposed this was another thing that there might not be a good way to change. "...Magpie? Why did I think you said magpie?"

"That's what Urraca means."

"You named a snake 'Magpie'?"

"When I've let her open her eyes, she always goes after anything shiny. She tried to eat the hilt of Godric's sword once."

Harry winced.

"It wasn't that bad," Salazar said, apparently oblivious to the real reason for Harry's expression. "It's not as if it was the blade."

"Right," Harry said faintly.

Salazar eyed him sharply and sighed. "I should probably not ask... You've used the sword, haven't you."

"The Sorting Hat dropped it on my head."

"What in the world were you doing with the Sorting Hat down here? Not that it isn't a very useful item, but honestly, if I were going to fight a dangerous beast that wouldn't listen to me, the Sorting Hat would not be my first choice." Salazar paused to consider this. "Then again, I suppose that might change if I thought there was a sword in it."

"I didn't know there was a sword in it. Fawkes brought it."

"Who or what is a Fawkes?"

Harry swallowed against the ache in his throat. "That was the name of Dumbledore's phoenix."

"Hmm. Godric has a phoenix, occasionally. Or perhaps the phoenix has him. It's hard to tell sometimes."

Harry hesitated. "Does Urraca think the phoenix is something shiny to grab, too?"

"Not exactly. He sits on her head, and she holds very still."

"...Right." Harry decided not to ask if Urraca liked phoenix song. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Maeve didn't really seem like a Dark Creature, for all her destructive potential.

Urraca, when Salazar dismissed her, went prowling around the chamber, muttering about wanting to go hunting. The humans in the room gathered around the table for dinner -- well, dinner for three of them anyway -- and a discussion of time travel made cumbersome by the need for interpretation. It didn't help that Hermione was, of Harry and his friends, the best equipped to understand the subject but not the language. Before the evening was out, she and Rowena were next to one another, communicating primarily by diagrams and numerals, although the other three Founders were still putting their oars in. Salazar usually remembered to tell Harry what was going on, and Harry tried his best to tell Ron -- though Ron moved in closer when the diagrams started including something remarkably like a cross between a chessboard and a game of cat's-cradle.

Rowena thought they would be working at the spell design for two weeks. This was very nearly accurate; it turned out to be little longer, in spite of a number of lessons having nothing to do with time travel.

-----


	14. Chapter 14: Legilimens

Chapter 14: Legilimens

That first night, the seven of them (not counting the basilisk Urraca, who spent the entire time hunting rats in the walls, or Jakinda, who watched and listened far more attentively but couldn't really participate) worked nearly until dawn, hashing out what the spell had to be able to do, the basic shape of it (whatever that meant), and how much power it was likely to take. Harry was sure he'd been completely lost since three in the morning.

Naturally there was no way to see the sun rise or to hear a rooster crow from the Chamber of Secrets -- for the first, it was under a lake with no enchanted windows or ceilings, and for the second, it was after all the home of a basilisk. But there were bells in the school, and early in the morning a chime rippled across the ceiling that made everyone look up and simultaneously yawn.

Godric, Helga, and Rowena went off to break their fast -- dinner had long since disappeared, and they hadn't eaten anything since coming down to the Chamber -- and to teach their awakening students, grumbling (so Salazar translated it) that they were getting much too old for this sort of thing.

"Those of us who haven't anything else to do at the moment, however," Salazar added, "should probably get some sleep. They all _say_ they're too old for this and will be too tired to do anything tonight, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they all turn up looking as if they've been hit on the head but still bursting with ideas." He grinned at Harry's expression. "That's not an insult. I've done it myself, and more recently than you might think."

Harry laughed at that. "I don't know how you all keep going. I'm tired, anyway."

"You're only seventeen," Salazar retorted. "You're not allowed to be tired!"

Harry, Ron, and Hermione slept much of the day away, which left them logy and embarrassed when they finally woke, especially since Hermione had dozed off in the boys' room. This wasn't really considered appropriate in their own century, and they all rather suspected it would be considered less so in this one. On the other hand, if she was to be discovered in their room at all, there were worse times than the middle of the afternoon.

Salazar was right, not only about the other three Founders but about himself. When they reconvened, all the Hogwarts Four immediately started talking all at once, and they spent a considerable amount of time stumbling over each other's sentences before they managed to get themselves sorted out.

Meanwhile, as they waited for a translation, the four younger people were laughing over Jakinda's preparations for the event. Evidently she had wanted to come, or else Salazar hadn't liked to leave her alone -- but as she'd spent most of the previous night with her head on her hand and drifting on the edge of sleep, tonight she had brought suitable gear: a squashy pillow and several blankets, most of which she began laying out, folded longer than they were wide, and stacked on each other on the floor.

On seeing the bedding, Harry grinned and gave her a thumbs-up; Jakinda smiled back tentatively but with blank, worried eyes. Hermione leaned in and tried, in a muddle of Latin and what was presumably the pronunciation of some of the words she'd learned in Ancient Runes, to explain.

After several minutes of this and hand gestures that looked to Harry like flailing, Jakinda grinned back. She grinned with her whole face, which made her look a bit more like her father and his statue, and made Harry think that he knew where her wrinkles would be when she was old.

The process of Jakinda putting herself to bed on the floor started out very matter of fact but somehow turned into an elaborate and very silly production. Ron impulsively bowed and picked up one of the remaining blankets, throwing an end to Harry so they could start folding it; Jakinda bowed back when they set it down, then rescued the last blanket and wrapped it around herself, adopting a very serene and faintly smug expression as she lay down. Hermione put the pillow under her head and tucked her in. Jakinda batted her eyes, which prompted Hermione at the very last to mime a kiss to the air over her cheek.

This set all four of them laughing helplessly and as quietly as they could, which finally attracted the attention of the Founders and brought Salazar away from the discussion. As by this time nothing was actually going on, Salazar could only survey his daughter's makeshift bed on the floor and the other three grinning faces (doing their level best to get back to normal, serious expressions and contorting terribly in the process) and give them all a baffled and faintly suspicious look, which set Jakinda off again, practically crying with laughter. She finally managed to give him an explanation, whereupon he shook his head, kissed her cheek (not the air), and waved the other three up to the table.

This second night was also a late one; on the third, Helga put her foot down shortly after what must have been midnight and insisted (according to Salazar's translation) that they had to sleep at some point or they would be utterly useless during the day _and_ probably wind up sending everyone a thousand feet up in the air instead of a thousand years into the future, which would be painful.

They still worked long and intensely on both the spell itself and on attempts to make discussing it easier. Hermione spent hours with Helga and sometimes Rowena patiently writing out meanings and explaining pronunciation, sorting out what the lessons in Ancient Runes had and had not covered, until they could carry on at least a slow conversation without Harry and Salazar as go-betweens. Hermione was still more fluent in the diagrams... apparently Arithmantic conventions remained very traditional. Some of them remained on the slate; others hung in the air, etched in static blue lightning. Once it was decided that the spell would require a mingling of fire and water, Hermione returned to one of her favorite spells from first year, and bluebell flames danced on a shallow basin.

Ron suggested once during the day that all the staring into the flames and lightning was starting to make Hermione's eyes look blue even when she left the spellwork behind, but she looked into the mirror and insisted they were still brown.

Ron was participating a great deal more than any of them had really expected. After hashing out some differences in the rules and the shape of the pieces, he and Rowena had played a quick match of something rather like chess, which turned out to be a useful model for some types of spell design.

Harry was actually beginning to feel a little left out of the whole process, which had gone largely nonverbal.

On the fifth day, Salazar took him aside to start quizzing him on all his interactions with Voldemort. Harry started with the obvious and ended up racking his brains for details; he described the burning in his scar and admitted to the feeling when he'd first encountered the diary Horcrux that the name of Tom Riddle had seemed familiar, and not in a hostile or unpleasant way. He hadn't thought about that for a while, and it made him decidedly uncomfortable.

"Not reassuring, no," Salazar hissed thoughtfully. "But not immediately alarming. The mind plays tricks on itself at times. But this mental connection -- you say you tried Occlumency to block it, but it didn't work? And yet Voldemort was able to block it the next year?"

"It worked when he tried it," Harry grumbled. "Dumbledore said that when my scar stopped hurting even though Voldemort was obviously really active, it meant he was probably using Occlumency against me."

"So the magic is related." Salazar tapped his fingertips together and glanced over at the worktable. "Rowena and Helga are the experts in spell design. They could probably do without me or Godric for the time being, and _he_ is the most accomplished Legilimens and Occlumens I have yet encountered or heard of."

Harry grimaced. "Do you really think that would help? I didn't much enjoy having my brain broken into over and over again."

Salazar gave him a skewering look. "Evidently the disciplines are relevant. Shall we consult?"

"I suppose so," Harry said, not feeling very happy about it.

"Excellent. Godric!" This last call was not in Parseltongue, and Harry promptly lost track of the conversation until Salazar saw fit to inform him that Godric would be happy to teach him, if Harry agreed.

Harry agreed.

-----

The first Occlumency lesson began with Harry in a room with both Godric and Salazar, for which Harry felt some secret relief. If Salazar was there, that probably meant that there would be some instructions involved. Perhaps there would even be more than with Snape.

Harry took deep breaths and tried to clear his mind in preparation while Godric spoke.

Salazar nodded through Godric's explanation and then supplied the translation. "You should begin by clearing your mind of distractions, then sort through what you want to hide and learn to set that and the feelings connected to it aside. It is very difficult to specifically avoid thinking of a given thing, but it is, in the end, the key to Occlumency. Try substituting another thought, or blankness if you don't mind being obvious, but you need to have it ready to hand, so to speak. Like preparing a memory to call on easily for your Patronus, so that when you meet a Dementor, you don't have to go searching for the thoughts that are hardest to find then anyway."

When Salazar paused, Godric added a question. Salazar translated, "What method did your previous teacher take? You look as if this wasn't it."

"He just told me to clear my mind and control my emotions," said Harry. "Then he jumped right in and attacked me."

"Hrm. That's not an uncommon method -- it does work well sometimes, particularly when the student has reason not to want the teacher in his mind. The attacks should start out fairly weak, though, to build up strength." Another exchange between the two older wizards. "Godric says to sit, and choose something to try to hide from him."

Harry frowned. "I thought the idea was to shut somebody out of your mind altogether."

"Well, then try to think about nothingness."

Harry sat down with his eyes shut and tried to think about nothingness.

The other two murmured to each other, and at last Salazar hissed, "Look at his eyes."

Harry opened his own eyes and fixed them on Godric's, trying to hold the thought of blankness.

"_Legilimens._" The incantation, at least, was easy to recognize. Godric's gaze bored into his, and Harry caught himself starting to think of Snape again. Immediately Godric blinked, and there was a sense of pressure lifting away even though Harry hadn't felt it being applied.

Godric shook his head and spoke. Salazar translated, "Again."

This time it _tickled_, and Harry swatted at the feeling, trying to make it rebound. For a second it felt almost like the time he'd forced Snape's spell back on him, and he thought he would see Godric's own thoughts, but then he hit something and his thoughts scattered like ripples hitting shore.

"It's possible that we'll want you studying Legilimency too," Salazar translated after a moment, "but let's stick to one at a time for now."

More explanations and more attempts followed. Salazar provided them with translations of a few choice phrases so that after the first few days of lessons he could leave Harry alone with Godric.

Harry didn't think it was helping much. He now had a better idea of how he was supposed to go about Occlumency, but he still didn't seem to be very good at it, and he didn't think it was just because he minded having Godric Gryffindor in his thoughts less than having Severus Snape see them. Not that he was exactly happy about it, even so. Godric had seen altogether more memories than Harry even wanted to look at himself.

And even when Godric didn't try to aim for the worst memories, Harry dreamed all too often at night of the Department of Mysteries, of Dementors, of Voldemort rising from a cauldron... or of chickens and werewolves, knives and razor-sharp beaks, and being covered in blood. He tried clearing his mind and reminding himself that he still liked eating chicken and that Fenrir Greyback had been intending, if not to kill Gabrielle Delacour, then to steal her away or injure her permanently. After that, he dreamed of playing Quidditch in the Weasleys' orchard, where there ran a calm stream filled with blood, and rippling mirrored curtains hung from the trees. And, rather incongruously, his broomstick got stuck in one gigantic nostril of Slytherin's statue, and came out covered with troll snot.

Ron told him jokes about the dreams, which made them much less eerie.

And then there were the unexpected hazards.

"_Legilimens._" Godric had made it clear that speaking the incantation was merely a courtesy for while Harry was learning. Even with the warning, however, Harry still found memories rising leisurely into his mind without his willing them, and certainly without his wanting them, and while they seemed to flow as naturally as at any other time he might unwillingly reminisce, he also had the feeling that there were fingers in his mind and turning pages.

Today they happened to be of Sirius. Seeing his surprise as he arced back through the Veil... the mirror, finding it, smashing it, gathering up the pieces, the cuts from the sharp edges of the fragments... finding its mate under the pillow with the fat spider...

Grimmauld Place. Sirius inviting him, as they left the Shrieking Shack expecting the truth to come out, to come and live with him. Later that night, when the Dementors surrounded them, before... before...

A silver stag erupted outward, though Harry didn't remember casting a Patronus, and charged straight for Godric with its antlers lowered.

The room was too small for Godric to have room to try to dodge; the great stag could almost have touched him by the time it was fully formed. He raised his hands a little, as if to grasp the antlers, and if the stag had been physical he would have caught them, for all the good it might have done him. Through the stag's light, Harry saw the antlers break through Godric's palms and take him in the chest; then the stag had gone straight through Godric and the wall behind him, leaving Godric leaning against the stone with his head thrown back.

He braced himself and stood straight again, shaking out his robes. His hands were trembling. Harry averted his eyes for a moment, from that, which left him startled when Godric touched his chin gently and turned his face forward again, saying the words that had been translated for him as "Look at me."

Harry looked.

The images behind Godric's eyes, freely offered, were blinding silver-white tinged with wonder. The stag's charge had been something like Harry's own encounter with the hummingbird, a sensation of piercing without pain, only a very great intensity and some little sense of the force of someone else's joy.

That covered the reassurance that he hadn't actually caused any injury; after a moment more, the image reappeared -- not quite memory now, unmoving, the stag again -- with a strong sense of approval. "_Bonus est._"

"Er... Thanks." He really ought to start remembering how to say that in Latin or Old English. Either one would do. Apparently Godric was pleased with his Patronus. Harry was impressed that Godric had the self-possession to comment on this after being charged by it.

Godric was giving him a long and thoughtful look now, and after a moment the Founder went and slapped a hand against the wall near a corner, speaking to it in a loud voice. A few minutes later, a narrow section of the wall shimmered and disappeared, and Salazar walked through it.

Not far into Godric's explanation, Salazar started laughing.

"What?" Harry asked. "What did he say?"

"'Let's just say that his best defense may be a good offense.'" Salazar was still chuckling, giving his hisses an odd staccato quality. "Godric says you don't seem to be able to... divide your thoughts as one must for Occlumency. You do, however, seem to have some talent for turning the spell around and searching in your questioner's mind, and he suggests it might help to concentrate on teaching you Legilimency itself instead. Most people, even skilled Occlumenes, will have trouble paying attention to your thoughts or delving into them effectively if you're poking about in theirs."

"Well, I can't do much worse at that," Harry said wryly. Then, thoughtfully, "What if I wanted to show someone some of my thoughts on purpose? Not just putting them in the way like you suggested earlier, but the way Godric showed me memories just now?"

Godric grinned when he heard that question in full. "We can work on that too."

-----


	15. Chapter 15: Worse Than Death

Chapter 15: Worse Than Death

Work they did. Harry didn't know if he and his friends were ever explained to the current students, though he knew some of them watched when Godric took him outdoors and insisted on beginning to teach him swordplay. This was especially interesting since Salazar was remaining scrupulously out of sight, and therefore they had no translator.

That meant the instruction in the use of a sword was performed almost entirely via Legilimency. Harry's scar didn't hurt, but he ended up with a splitting headache the first few times anyway. Mostly right behind his eyes, flashing like the sun on a blade.

He staggered back indoors from the third session, nearly blind in the sudden cool shade but utterly grateful, and slipped as soon as possible into a little-used secret passage.

Naturally, someone was using it.

"Harry." Salazar's voice. "I thought you might find me here. How are the lessons going?"

Harry had to blink repeatedly, waiting for his vision to adjust, before peering at the older man in the soft light. He still couldn't reliably speak Parseltongue without looking at someone or something else that could. "I asked Godric whether he really expected me to be able to learn to use a sword well in a few days," he said, "and he said no."

Salazar laughed at that. "What else could he say? It takes years. But he can at least teach you not to use a sword atrociously, and I suppose he plans to settle for that."

"I don't understand why I'm learning it anyway," Harry said. "I mean... I appreciate the lessons. I really do. I reckon it's good Legilimency practice, too -- you notice I asked him and you weren't even there." He rubbed his eyes. "But there's really not that much use for a sword when I get back to when I came from."

"Is there not?" Salazar asked with some interest. "There are certainly situations now where a blade is more efficient than a spell."

Harry blinked. "Well, it's not as if we don't use knives for... for cooking, or on potion ingredients. But nobody really duels with swords anymore."

Salazar's eyebrows went up. "You told me," he said slowly, "that you and Voldemort use brother wands. And that you intend to kill him."

Harry looked down at his feet. "Yes," he said, thinking he would have to repeat it because he would be speaking English, and was startled when the word came out as a dismal hiss.

When he looked up, Salazar's eyebrows had drawn together. "I was not criticizing the decision," the older wizard said mildly. "I may not be happy about the situation, but I acknowledge that from what you've told me, it is necessary."

Harry blew out a long unhappy breath. "I want everybody to be safe from him," he said. "He's not going to stop, and I don't know how we could hold him without his getting loose somehow, and... it's up to me. I'm not exactly sorry. I want to kill him... but I'm not sure I want to be a killer." He looked into Salazar's puzzled face. "You've killed people, haven't you."

A slow nod. "I have killed Muggles who sought to destroy wizards," Salazar said, "and wizards who sought to destroy rivals -- Hogwarts was not popular among the more secretive guilds," he added at Harry's startled expression. "I have killed brigands both magical and not, who attacked me or my companions on the road, and raiders who would have pillaged my home."

"It doesn't bother you."

Salazar eyed him sharply. "It is not a thing to be taken lightly, nor to seek out wantonly, but I fail to understand why it troubles you to think of killing someone who means to destroy you, destroy those you care about, and whom you cannot confine." His mouth turned up at one corner. "Mercy is the privilege of strength. And wizards are hard to control, even for other wizards. What is done with the intractably criminal, in your time?"

"They go to Azkaban," Harry said. "To prison. It used to be guarded by Dementors, but they went over to Voldemort. The worst criminals were sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss, but--" He stopped. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, with his eyes still a little strange from the hot liquid brilliance of sun on a sword, but he thought Salazar had gone rather white.

"I think," Salazar said, "that for myself, I would regard the sword as a mercy."

"So you think it's better to kill someone?"

"Do you think the Dementor's Kiss leaves them alive?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. Salazar was already walking away and had nearly vanished into the shadows of the passage.

Harry stood where he was for a while before going to clean up. Some of the extravagant plumbing in Hogwarts was older than he would have been led to believe.

He decided, while soaking, that he was not going to pursue the question with Salazar just yet. He had to admit that the condition of someone Kissed by a Dementor wasn't exactly what he'd call living, but it didn't seem dead either. And after the frank discussion of when Salazar considered it necessary to kill people, Harry hadn't exactly been expecting that kind of reaction to the mention of Dementors.

That evening, therefore, he went in search of Godric. There was no Legilimency lesson scheduled, which made it a little harder, but he had a few ideas where to start looking. Being a Gryffindor himself helped. So did remembering that even if he wasn't quite used to the idea, his presence was public knowledge now and he didn't _have_ to stick to secret passages.

The staff room where they'd met once held Helga and Rowena, as deeply involved in discussion as they usually were when he saw them in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry apologized for intruding, though he suspected that even the Latin attempt was too mangled to be intelligible, and backed out. The Headmaster's office lacked its customary gargoyle, and there was no answer when he knocked.

The Head of Gryffindor, then? Knocking on the third door of the evening evoked a gruff "_Veni,_" and Harry pushed the heavy door open. Fire and candlelight played over rough stone walls; the room was warm after the cool halls and a little stuffy with the smell of smoke and beeswax.

Godric stood at a table, poring over a long scroll. He examined Harry's expression for a moment, then tapped the scroll with his wand. It rolled up, and he moved it aside.

Harry stepped up to the other side of the table, fixed his eyes on Godric's, and tried to push out the thoughts that went with what he was about to say. "I have some questions. Do you have some time?"

"This scroll will be with me longer than you will," Godric replied.

Harry smiled a little at that. As he had, Godric was speaking the words as he thought them. Hermione would probably have been concentrating on matching up the meanings to the sounds; Harry just let the voice wash over him and worked on following the ideas presented to him. "Thank you," he said. Now how to bring up the subject... oh. Thinking about it while Godric stared at his mind probably counted. This kind of conversation wasn't much good for careful wording.

"I'd prefer plain speech anyway," Godric said. "But a little more organization wouldn't go amiss."

"I was talking to Salazar about having to kill Voldemort," Harry blurted, "and he asked what wizards in my time did with the intractably criminal. I said they were put in prison guarded by Dementors, or Kissed at the worst..." He winced at Godric's expression. "Are you going to walk off too?"

Godric snorted. "Where would I go? This is my study." A slight shake of his head. "Dementors are appalling things. Despair made to walk, and given a mouth to feed. The Dark Arts embodied, you might say. If this is intended to be a worse punishment than death, it sounds like a success, but I wonder if the price is worth paying."

"The price?"

"The Dark Arts always exact a price. Their deceit is to lead the user to believe that what is lost never mattered."

Harry tilted his head. "So Horcruxes..."

"Are old magic. All sacrifice is. But they are a perversion of it." A thin smile. "In one way, a wizard who has made a Horcrux does acknowledge the value of a soul. But not of a whole one. In his selfishness he mutilates himself."

"But the Dementors," Harry said. "I react really badly to them, but I don't just... walk off if somebody brings them up."

Godric shook his head again. "Their effects are certainly horror enough, even without the Kiss. We have no cure for exposure but time and tenderness. But--"

"What about chocolate?"

A pause. Harry could feel Godric's puzzled leafing through the accompanying images. "I'm not familiar with the substance."

"Oh. It's from South America..." This wasn't conveying much more information. Harry forced a globe into his mind and spun it gently. "I guess you don't have it yet. Never mind. Sorry."

"I'm tempted to try the voyage, but for some reason I doubt I shall. As I was saying, however, I think Salazar may be less troubled by the fate of your criminals than by the fact that consorting with and controlling Dementors, even inflicting them on others, appear to have become acceptable in your time. That these are not treated as magical crimes in themselves." A wry look. "Frankly, I don't blame him. Those who do attempt to command Dementors lend credence to certain Muggle accusations that we consort with devils."

"Why did he say they don't leave the victim alive?"

Godric looked puzzled. "After a Kiss? The soul is gone from the body, isn't it?"

"Well, yes... but the body is alive."

They stared at one another for a moment. Harry had the definite impression that there was a failure of communication.

"The body functions," Godric said slowly. "I am not sure I would call it living. The mind might still be present, but I believe after experiencing the Kiss it must inevitably be in ruins." He frowned. "Perhaps not for this Voldemort of yours, after everything he's done to his soul himself."

"They're working for him, anyway," Harry said.

"I'm not surprised." Godric studied him carefully. Harry felt a bit awkward, as if he had gone to the doctor to be poked and prodded, but he held still. At last Godric said, "You seem ambivalent."

"Sir?"

"You recognize that this Voldemort must die. In part, you want to kill him. But you are not comfortable with the idea." Slowly, "Neither Muggles nor wizards of your time are comfortable with the idea. The wizards... have deceived themselves that by using the Dementors, they do a lesser evil. And keep their hands clean."

Harry shifted uncomfortably. "I know the Dementors are awful. Anyway, they listen to him, not me."

"That's probably better for your soul. Stick to the Patronus."

Harry let out an exasperated breath. "If using Dementors is so bad, won't killing him make me like him? Won't _wanting_ to?"

Godric shook his head. "Are you planning to make a habit of killing wantonly, at a whim and at your convenience?"

"Of course not!"

"Are you planning to kill him for revenge, or because it is necessary?"

Harry grimaced and answered as honestly as he could. "A... little bit of both."

"Only human." Harry felt he must have looked surprised; Godric grinned. "I think you need to be careful, but at the moment you're worrying too much."

Harry sighed. "The Killing Curse is an Unforgivable, you know. Like Cruciatus and Imperius."

"The Killing Curse..."

"You know. _Avada Kedavra._ Some of the worst Dark Magic. That's how Voldemort killed my parents, and how he tried to kill me." Harry touched his scar. "I don't know how to get rid of him and keep him from going on the way he has been except by killing him, but I thought that was _why_ the spell was bad. Why would it be any worse to kill someone with a spell than with... I don't know... poison." His eyes flicked up to the long weapon currently stored in its scabbard on the wall, easy to lift up and belt on. "Or a sword?"

"Why is it better to get your way by persuasion than deceit?" Godric's eyebrows knit. "As for the spell choice, to the best of my knowledge _Avada Kedavra_ is the incantation for a healing spell, which at once complicates the question and answers it."

"A _healing_ spell?" Harry was shaking his head, almost involuntarily. That made no sense.

"Oh, yes, and one of the most powerful. Not against injuries, but diseases, festerings, or tumors. Occasionally poison. _Let the thing be destroyed._ It's not easy on caster or patient, but with sufficient will and magical power, it can cure things nothing else will touch."

"But it's--"

"Been perverted, from what you tell me. It's possible that that's what makes it so horrific. To turn a healing spell against its nature would be the same type of act, though not the same degree, as killing a unicorn." He looked off into the distance, in deep thought, before returning his eyes to Harry's. "Or it could simply be that in order to use it, you must teach yourself to think of another person not as an enemy, but as a disease."

Harry stopped to digest that. "Even if that's it, though," he said slowly, "how can you use the same incantation for different spells?"

"Intent matters. How else could you cast nonverbal spells?"

"I think the incantations."

"Accidental magic, then. And while some of the more advanced nonverbal spells do involve too complicated an intend to have a proper incantation, even in simple ones, think -- do you verbalize, even to yourself, every detail of what you want to happen?"

Harry supposed that he did not.

"Besides, I'm certain you must have experienced ambiguous speech before. The sort of lie where one technically speaks the exact truth, or part of it, but intends the listener to understand something wholly different." Godric's mouth quirked. "If you don't want to admit either to using it or to having been deceived, I will merely suggest you can find examples in the words of both lawyers and prophets."

Harry snorted a little at that. "Somehow I don't think I'll be trying it as a healing spell any time soon."

"Fair enough." Godric gave him a measuring look. "Do you intend to use it for its altered purpose?"

Harry let out a breath. "I don't want to. I don't know if I can. But I don't know how else to deal with him. I'm not sure a sword is going to... work out."

"It's possible," Godric said slowly, "that you will not have to. That in the end something else will intervene, that another solution will present itself, even that the damage he has done himself will destroy him. But you have to consider... what you want. And what will really accomplish it." His eyes flicked up. "Salazar is like a brother to me, but he and his students too often fail by seeing what appears expedient, and not the other consequences of their deeds. Guard against that."

"Er," Harry said, "I'm in _your_ House."

"So you are. That doesn't make it any less of a danger." Thoughtfully, "Have you ever looked into Helga's mirror, Harry?"

"What?" Harry was entirely confused now. But then the images in Godric's mind began to look familiar -- a large mirror, with an inscription around its frame... "Helga Hufflepuff made the Mirror of Erised?" Harry yelped. "But it's dangerous!"

"So?"

"But... I mean... it lures people to forget to go anywhere else, and just end up trapped there dreaming. Doesn't it?"

"Remember, we're talking about Helga, here. She... well, she is quite fond of a few dreamers here and there, and she's certainly not afraid to look up at the stars and think of seizing them herself. But she's never seen any point in merely looking, and not reaching up. She doesn't approve. And most of her students, like her, are not so inclined to sit and look at an illusion in a mirror instead of going and trying to make their desires reality." His eyes narrowed. "Do you want to be adept at a spell that requires you to nurture in yourself the ability to be cruel?"

"I have to, don't I, if I'm going to kill him. And I don't see any other way this is going to end."

"Maybe there isn't. But no. You can give him a merciful death--"

"He's afraid of dying more than anything else in the world."

Godric smiled. "We already established that he's a fool. But you can give him a _clean_ death for the sake of all he would destroy if you let him have his way, and for your own sake let that pay for all he's destroyed before."

With an unexpected surge of bitterness, Harry said, "It's not enough."

"No. But it's all you can take from him. If you are not sated with that much revenge and with the life you win for yourself, then you are venturing into unwontedly dangerous waters. I don't think that is what you want."

"I want my family back." The barest whisper.

"Everyone's family dies," Godric said gently. "Make a new one. There's a girl, isn't there? Look into Helga's mirror, but then go and do what you must. Don't waste your life in dreams... or on regrets. That much, I think, is the same advice you'd get from any of us." Godric paused. "And try to keep up your swordwork."

-----


	16. Chapter 16: Time, and Time Again

Chapter 16: Time, and Time Again

"You all right, mate?"

Harry finished rubbing his eyes and looked up at Ron as he stretched out on the bed. They were still sharing a room. The Founders looked askance when Hermione visited it, but hadn't tried to stop her yet. "Fine."

"Does that mean you're actually fine," Ron asked pointedly, "or do you just want me to stop asking?"

Harry blinked and sat up again. "No, I really am fine," he said. "I mean, still worried about getting rid of Voldemort, but I don't think I have any new problems." He paused. "Do I look like I'm not fine?"

Ron shrugged. "I don't see a lot of you lately. Either Hermione and I are working on the spells, or you're Merlin knows where, or both. When you do make it down to the Chamber with us, you keep yawning." He waved off Harry's guilty look. "What I want to know is, what have they got you doing that's got you so knackered?"

"Godric's teaching me Legilimency and trying to teach me to use a sword. Sometimes both at once." After a moment's thought, he added, "The Legilimency is going better."

"I didn't think that worked too well before. 'Course, that was..." Ron trailed off.

"With Snape." Harry scowled at the thought. "Besides, that was Occlumency. We tried that here too and it didn't go all that well, but Legilimency's... different." His expression lightened a bit as he looked over at Ron a bit sheepishly. "Still kind of tiring, though."

"Yeah, I got that from when you fell asleep when I tried to tell you how the spell was going."

Harry looked at him blankly. "When?"

"Last night!"

"I don't even remember," Harry said bemusedly. "Must've been half asleep already."

"You think?" Ron said, laughing.

Harry's eyes narrowed suddenly in thought.

All three of them were operating on a slightly odd schedule. Their work with the Founders -- three of them, anyway -- was by necessity outside the Founders' usual duties to their own students. Salazar seemed to have plenty of spare time, but he also seemed to find things to fill it, and not all of them involved trying to get Harry to practice giving orders to the grass snakes. (He had given up on getting Harry to spend more time with Urraca, for which Harry was grateful.)

Harry and Ron and Hermione had started taking at least some meals with everyone else, and it was true that between the physical and mental demands of his particular lessons Harry seemed to be sleeping more than the others, but now that he thought about it, that didn't account for everything. So where was everybody? "I don't spend all day asleep, you know," he said. "Neither do you. What have you and Hermione been doing while everybody else is busy?"

To his surprise, the tops of Ron's ears turned pink. "Well, we have been working on the spell without them..."

"Er," Harry said, "if the rest of it's anything like you did with Lavender, you don't have to explain disappearing. I doubt the Founders would like their younger students watching."

Ron's ears turned downright red, and he said, "It's better than with Lavender." He paused. "That's not going to bother you, is it?"

"Only if you can snog her and fight with her at the same time," Harry said solemnly. "Anyway, I think Godric is expecting me to marry your sister."

Ron blinked. "What brought _that_ on? I mean, why were you talking to him about Ginny?"

Harry thought about that for a moment. "I don't think I did, actually. He might've seen it in our lessons. Or Salazar could have told him. I, er, brought her up when he started hinting about Jakinda."

That made Ron stop and blink more. "Marrying Salazar Slytherin's daughter would be _weird_," he said fervently.

"It'd be even weirder if her father had to hang around and translate," Harry said drily. He paused, thinking about talking to Ron about Dementors and death. Maybe another day. If he tried it now, neither of them would get any sleep. "So. How _is_ the spell coming?"

"Almost done," Ron said, skipping the eerily Hermione-like explanation he'd launched into the last time Harry remembered discussing the subject. Ron hadn't been nearly as huffy as Hermione about being asked to trim it down, though. "We should be ready to try it in a few days."

-----

The spell was ready.

It was untested, of course, because there was no real way to test it.

"I don't suppose you can send a rock or a rat or something a few minutes ahead in time and see if it comes in all right?" Harry asked.

"We did that," Hermione said. "They were both fine. But Harry, that's... that's not really the same spell at all. The important one depends on returning us to the future we left. Preferably not before we left it, or very long after." She wrung her hands. "I did my best with the changes I remembered being made to the calendar."

Ron patted her shoulder. "It'll work," he said.

Harry gave him a curious look. That didn't sound like he was just saying it. It sounded like real confidence.

The air seemed to crackle as they approached the Chamber that night. The electrical feeling might have had something to do with the blue lightning crackling around a weird twisted spiraling ribbon of sand.

"It's a Moebius strip," Hermione whispered.

"Oh," Harry whispered back. "Is that good?"

"It's the part that's supposed to make sure we land close to the time we left."

"Oh," Harry said. He supposed that was good.

Jakinda was sitting well out of the way, unconcerned by Urraca's restless prowl around the floor near her feet. She absently stretched out one foot toward the basilisk, who after a moment shifted and began rubbing her head purposefully against Jakinda's toes. Harry decided it must be time for a new skin.

The four Founders were gathered around the spellworkings, muttering to each other. Harry half expected Ron and Hermione to go join them, but apparently their role was done.

Hermione tugged on his arm. "We've got to go stand under the sand," she said. "We should be touching each other, probably. The spell treats us as a magical unit."

"What's that mean?" Probably that they all had to go together, but he'd guessed that.

"It happens sometimes," Ron said. "Usually to wizards or other magical beings, but I hear it can happen with Muggles too. If you think of yourselves as a group, as part of the same thing, sometimes spells can treat you that way too."

"Usually in groups of three or four," Hermione added, stepping up under the crackling sand and turning to face them. "Actually, three is generally a more powerfully magical number than four, but you need four as well if you're to get to seven or twelve, so fours certainly have their place and the Hogwarts Four are one of the most impressive examples. Trying to deal with more than thirteen individuals as a unit will get ridiculously complicated, though. Very confusing. Thirteen actually presents some particular complications and twists of its own -- some Arithmancers have been driven mad by it -- and there _is_ a certain sort of instability and a tendency to break down into twelve and one, almost as if it's radioactive. But after that the calculations just become unmanageable in themselves. You can work through some of them by breaking down the numbers into factors or smaller groups you can add up, and there have been particular properties of various prime numbers discovered, but it's really challenging and generally not very efficient if you can't find one of those patterns. Although looking for new ones is very interesting!" She stopped for a breath. Harry wasn't sure whether she'd had another one since she started. "Anyway, that's one of the reasons wizards set up so many things in slightly larger prime numbers... eleven and up. It cuts down on magical interference."

Harry blinked. "What does it mean to be treated as a magical unit? And do they count?" He nodded at the Founders as he and Ron tried to find a position where they could all stand touching each other and still talk. Holding hands in a ring hadn't been quite what he had in mind, but it worked well enough. He peered past Ron. "Even though Salazar left?"

"Apparently. Anyway, usually it means that you're more effective together than apart, or sometimes that if one of you is affected by something then you all are -- though of course _that_ can just be because you won't leave each other alone! -- or very often that there are certain types of spells that need something from all of you or have to affect each of you in order to affect any."

Harry frowned. "That sounds kind of worrying, somehow."

"Suits me," Ron said. "We already said we're in this with you, didn't we? Anyhow, it's kind of fuzzy. In this case, _if_ it's true, it mostly means we got here... er, now... together and it'll be safer and less complicated to send us back all at once instead of separately. Which is what we wanted to do anyway."

"Prepare yourselves," Salazar called, and Harry relayed it. And then laughed a little at Salazar's expression when the other three Founders, instead of simply casting the spell, all went up to say goodbye. He joined them after a moment, gripping Harry's shoulder. "You have been worth knowing," he said at last.

Godric shot a penetrating glance at his old friend before looking into Harry's eyes. "Perhaps he can't bring himself to say he wishes you success, given whom you have to fight, but I can." Bright laughter in his eyes, though it didn't come out in his voice. "And I can say I'm glad to have you in my House. You've been a good student, and you do me honor."

Harry felt as if his brain was tongue-tied, but he felt Godric understood him well enough.

The Founders stepped back and raised their wands; Harry and his friends drew together. This was flashy magic, unrefined; the wand motions were swoopy and intricate, the light waving from them in multicolored braids. The lightning in the sand flashed blinding white. Thunder cracked.

When Harry's vision cleared and his ears stopped ringing, the Founders were still standing there, frowning and speaking to each other with considerable agitation. Ron paled; Hermione gave a small cry of dismay and ran down to join the group. Ron followed her after a moment, leaving Harry feeling rather ridiculous.

He had just decided to go down and join them when the group broke up again. Salazar was swearing vilely in Parseltongue, which didn't seem like a good sign.

Hermione hurried up to him with Ron beside her. "Harry," she said, then shot an agonized glance back at the Founders. "The spell wants Salazar and Jakinda to come with us."

"_What?_"

"They're what's missing. It must be..." Hermione faltered. "They must not have existed, in the time between now and then. From the perspective of where, I mean when, we want to get back to, they _did_ disappear off the face of the earth right about now. So for us to reach our future... for it to exist... he can't exist in between. That's why nobody knows Salazar Slytherin came back to Hogwarts and was reconciled with the other three Founders. That's why there's no record... It has to be a secret. He has to come with us. And Harry... I told you before, remember? There's no record of Salazar Slytherin coming back to Hogwarts."

Harry turned in a daze to Salazar, but evidently the first shock had worn off; he was embracing his three dearest friends, and when that was done, he turned to Harry with a crooked smile. "I suppose I'll see for myself that Hogwarts is to last more than a thousand years." His eyes kindled, a green glint in their dark depths. "And come to think of it," he said with the smile growing fierce, "if we're to join your time, then I fully intend that both Jakinda and I will outlive this madman you're planning to kill. He shall not be the last of my line living after all."

"You'll come, then?" Harry stared at him. "You'll leave everything here and come with us?"

"I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to it... but it appears that from your end of history, I already did."

After explaining the situation to her, Salazar took the pendant from Jakinda's neck and gave it, looking somewhat reluctant, into Godric's keeping; after all, they knew it had been passed on to his other descendants, and trying to take it along would probably just choke the spell and make them have to start over a third time. While Jakinda hugged the other three (even Godric), Salazar crossed the Chamber to the basilisk, who now lay along the wall and was making the most mournful noises Harry had ever heard out of a serpent.

"Ah, sweet one, my huntress," Salazar whispered to her. Harry felt as if he shouldn't listen; no one else in the room _could_ eavesdrop, but he had no choice. Parseltongue was peculiarly penetrating. "I'd take you with me if I could, you know, and preserve you from the fate the boy says you have in store. The spell wouldn't work if I tried to bring you... in their past, I left you here. Twice, it seems. It won't even do any good to warn you against listening to any descendant of mine who set you against Hogwarts itself -- you won't listen, or you'll forget, somehow. The blood spells hold too well. I thought my line would be the only ones to speak to you, but I thought they'd be worthier. I'm sorry, Urraca."

Harry thought about the feel of a sword hilt in his hands and didn't look at either of them.

The five of them, this time, all stepped into the field of the spell again. Salazar held Jakinda's arm; she looked pale enough to fall over.

Only three wands rose this time. And this time when the spell began, over the basilisk's sorrowful hiss of goodbye there rose a mad and rushing wind.

When the flare and thunder ended, they stood in the Chamber of Secrets still, but it was damp and dark and smelled of dead basilisk and the centuries left behind. Salazar bowed his head.

-----


	17. Chapter 17: Hogwarts, Homecoming

Chapter 17: Hogwarts, Homecoming

"_Lumos,_" Hermione whispered. Then she looked as if she rather regretted it. The Chamber didn't exactly look much better with more light.

Water dripped somewhere.

Salazar gently disengaged himself from Jakinda and went to examine the Basilisk's head. It wasn't in very good condition, but the broken fang and ruined eyes were still discernible. So was the hole through the brain. He looked up to meet Harry's eyes.

Harry winced. And changed the subject completely. "We should all go upstairs and see... er, see what's going on."

Salazar nodded and turned to Jakinda.

Harry blinked. But he'd spoken English. He was pretty sure he'd learned to tell the difference by now.

Hermione added, "We'll want to find out the date. I hope we've arrived in the right time, but if we came back before we left, we'll have to avoid ourselves. I do hope it's not too far after."

"Right," Harry said. "Well, let's go."

Salazar strode off without further consultation, hissing commands to the doors. He stopped at the cave-in, frowning. There was enough space to squeeze through, but instead he stooped down and placed both hands on the mucky floor, his wand beneath them.

Harry felt a vibration coming up through his feet, a rumble like a deep low growl that only edged into hearing several seconds after it started making his teeth buzz.

"_Reparo!_" Salazar said, with a note of impatience in his voice as if he were repeating something to a slow student.

The rocks shuddered, jolted, and began streaming back into place. Harry's jaw dropped as a red liquid glow flared along the jagged edges, heat radiating into the chilly air, and the broken stones mended themselves. They settled into position, fitting themselves together like puzzle pieces, and finally the passageway was clear again.

"I never saw _Reparo_ do _that_ before," Ron said.

Hermione looked up uneasily as they passed under the repaired area. "Well, he's a very powerful wizard, and he did build this place..."

"Apparently not all by himself like everybody thought, though," Ron pointed out.

"Maybe all four of them could do that?" Hermione looked thoughtful. "If they actually built the castle, they must have used magic to make it easier. Rowena did mention a lot of structural spells."

Salazar was flicking cleaning spells left and right, evidently rather annoyed at the state of the Chamber. When they reached the slide down from the girls' toilet, he simply instructed it to "Take us up!" in Parseltongue, and... up they went, easily enough.

"Well," he said to Harry, looking around at the room with an air of some puzzlement, "What else have they moved around? I suppose you and your friends should lead the way."

"Headmaster's office?" Harry asked, looking around at Ron and Hermione. They both nodded, and they all set off.

The guardian gargoyle looked grumpier than usual, somehow, and Harry had tried the name of several sweets and in desperation (after he remembered that McGonagall did not share Dumbledore's precise tastes) "Have a biscuit?" before Salazar reached past him and put a hand on its head. Evidently even this new addition could be overridden by one of the Founders, and the gargoyle got out of the way.

Salazar knocked sharply on the door, then proceeded immediately to open the door and go in.

McGonagall was standing straight and stern behind the desk. Umbridge was smiling fatuously from a seat in front of it. Both of them looked up in shock as five uninvited arrivals trooped in.

Umbridge appeared to swell up like an infuriated toad, and when she caught sight of Harry she popped up to her feet. "I see your discipline problems continue! What is the meaning of having students in the school before term begins?"

"I," McGonagall said coldly, "do not consider Mr. Potter a discipline problem."

Harry thought this was more than decent of her considering how much trouble he'd gotten into over the years, even if he usually hadn't meant to. Evidently so did Ron, judging from the half-stifled laugh he was trying to turn into a cough.

Salazar swept his gaze across the occupants of the room, then held up one finger and proceeded across the office to the shelf with the Sorting Hat, which he picked up and placed on his head. The battered hat jumped, as if in surprise, before sagging back into its usual comfortable slouch.

Harry watched with interest and a certain amount of alarm as Salazar's eyes shut and his lips thinned; sweat broke out on his face, but at last he removed the hat and said in perfectly intelligible English, "Good day to you both. My name is Salazar Slytherin, and this is my daughter, Jakinda. I assume I need not introduce anyone else, as you all appear to know one another already."

Everyone stared at him. Umbridge's wide mouth opened and closed. McGonagall's eyebrows rose, and she looked after a moment to Harry, who caught her eye and nodded.

Ron burst out, "You didn't try that trick with the Sorting Hat with us!"

Salazar nodded apologetically to him. "I didn't think of it before, as it happens, but I'm afraid it wouldn't have done you any good. The Sorting Hat, having learned the changes in the language as they happened, was able to pass them on to my mind... but it knew nothing of the present-day form in the past. I hope it will work as well for my daughter."

He beckoned Jakinda over and set the Hat on her head, where it slipped down only a little too far and sat. And sat. And... sat.

Salazar glared at it. "You had _better_ not be refusing," he began.

The rip at the Sorting Hat's brim opened, and the the whole thing gave a sort of apologetic shrug. "Sorry," it said, in the voice that usually proclaimed House assignments. "It's not the magic, you know. It's that I've already got some of your brains in me, so I can get further into your mind than hers. I can translate for her as long as she's got me on, though. Other than that... she'll have to learn it the long way."

"I see." Salazar touched Jakinda's shoulder lightly; she reached up to cover his hand, and then he folded his arms and regarded McGonagall and Umbridge, offering them a short bow. "I believe we were in the midst of introductions?"

Professor McGonagall recovered first. "I am Minerva McGonagall," she said, "erstwhile Professor of Transfiguration and Head of Gryffindor House, currently Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This is Dolores Umbridge, from the Ministry of Magic." She paused. "I cannot say I was expecting you to return to the school."

"I cannot say I was expecting to find the Head of Godric's House garbed in green," Salazar replied. "I apologize for the interruption, but I'm afraid an unanticipated effect of one of my enchantments brought three of your students into my era, and Jakinda and I have joined them for the return to their own time. What is the date?"

"The thirty-first of August," Umbridge said, with a vicious satisfaction explained by her next comment. "We have been discussing the new Headmistress's failure to fill several job openings in the teaching staff in time for the beginning of the school year. Unfortunately, she has been stalling and has until my visit today refused to admit this failure, so the Ministry's appointment of replacements is under a certain amount of time pressure."

Salazar stroked his beard. "I would truly hate to inconvenience this Ministry by requiring it to find teachers at such short notice," he said smoothly. "As I do have a certain interest in Hogwarts and its success, allow me to offer my assistance. What do you need done?"

Everyone stared at him. Except Jakinda, who didn't seem to find this offer at all surprising.

"I should make it clear," McGonagall said slowly, "that Hogwarts has not ceased to teach Muggle-born students, and _will_ not cease to do so. If your objections to this remain..." She raised her eyebrows pointedly.

Salazar shrugged. "I won't pretend to be pleased. I have never cared for trying to impress the ideas and practicalities of magic on Muggle-raised children with heads full of superstitions and misunderstandings. On the other hand, Hogwarts has evidently thrived ten centuries teaching Muggles' children, and who am I to quarrel against the weight of history?" A faint smile. "From what I'm told of the present day, Hogwarts is a better legacy than my own bloodline at the moment." He paused, his eyes steady on McGonagall's. "This school is dear to me, Headmistress. Entering it again was truly coming home. I'll even teach reading, if that's what you need."

McGonagall blinked. Twice. "We don't have a reading course... Professor Slytherin. Literacy is considerably more widespread than it was in your day. I could try to keep up Transfiguration myself, but _do_ still need a Defense against the Dark Arts teacher. But I should also warn you... I'm informed that Lord Voldemort jinxed the post when he was turned down from it." She ignored Umbridge's disdainful sniff. "No one has lasted more than one year in a row since."

Salazar bared his teeth. The expression really could not fairly be called a smile. "I can teach either." He planted his hands on the desk, and a black jaguar lashed its tail once and looked into McGonagall's face before he changed back. "Both, if necessary. We each considered ourselves responsible for our own apprentices' education in all areas, for all we pooled our secrets. And perhaps I can break this jinx of his."

"You're not a snake?" McGonagall asked in surprise.

"No, I'm not. Some sort of panther. It's very embarrassing; you've no idea how Godric crowed."

The corner of McGonagall's mouth twitched. "Given the climate, perhaps he would have been equally entertained by your growing torpid during winter."

"_Entertaining_ as this is," Umbridge broke in irritably, "I hardly think your proposal is adequate. One individual cannot fill both the Transfiguration and Defense posts, and it would not be practical or appropriate for the Headmistress to teach courses, much less to exhibit bias by remaining head of a House."

"I'll teach Defense against the Dark Arts," Harry said suddenly, two strides taking him over beside Salazar. "I did it in fifth year. But I can't be here all the time. Cut back the number of lessons, maybe, I'll still do better than Umbridge. Or Lockhart. Or bloody _Quirrel_."

"Hem, hem," said Umbridge, frowning at him. "_Language,_ Mr. Potter. And you cannot seriously believe you are qualified for a teaching position, much less that you can hold one part-time!" She infused the word "part-time" with a level of scandalized scorn ordinarily reserved for special occasions, such as the discovery that there were Chizpurfles in your socks, or when Dudley said the word "magic" or "diet."

"You aren't High Inquisitor anymore," Harry said. "You don't get to decide what it takes to be qualified for a teaching position. Professor-- _Headmistress_ McGonagall does."

Umbridge's nostrils flared. "Hogwarts is still under the authority of the Board of Directors, and must answer to the Ministry of Magic!"

Salazar said something extremely rude in Parseltongue. Harry rather wished he would say it in English, too. McGonagall might be shocked, but Umbridge really deserved it.

"Don't tell me _you_ want the post back," Harry said. "You didn't seem to manage it very well last time."

"If necessary," said Umbridge, with an expression of long-suffering on her toadlike features, "I will resume the post. I expect discipline to be much better enforced than it was during my previous tenure, naturally."

"You shouldn't," said McGonagall.

Harry said, "How about this? I'll duel you for it."

"I beg your pardon!"

"You ought to," said Harry. "Seriously. I'll duel you for the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. I don't mind. I know you were planning to use Cruciatus on me last time we talked to each other, but that's not really a worry -- I've faced people using Unforgivables before." He pushed aside the guilty thought that he'd tried one himself.

Umbridge spluttered.

"There will be no need for dueling," McGonagall said swiftly. "Mr. Potter meets all the formal requirements to teach at Hogwarts, and has demonstrated particular proficiency in Defense against the Dark Arts. Professor Slytherin," she continued, though she still sounded faintly incredulous about that part, "will teach Transfiguration and take over the position of Head of Gryffindor House. Gentlemen, you are hired. Madam Umbridge, thank you for your offer of assistance. _Good day_."

Umbridge looked as if she might explode. Harry hoped she would. But Ron and Hermione, too, had positioned themselves facing her, and Salazar was unabashedly looming. Most of the portraits were glowering disapprovingly at her. Dumbledore's still appeared to be asleep, but Harry thought he glimpsed a glimmer of blue under one lid.

"I was intimately involved in the construction and spellwork of Hogwarts," Salazar said with an air of polite menace. "Shall I have it show you out?"

Evidently Umbridge remembered that Hogwarts itself and this office in particular had not been terribly cooperative during her last stay. She stalked out.

The door slammed behind her.

"_There's_ a tale, I gather," Salazar said. "I shall have to learn more about this time period than I had reason to ask before." He paused, one corner of his mouth curling up. "For example, what _are_ the formal requirements to teach at Hogwarts?"

"There are none," McGonagall replied, "Beyond being appointed to do so by the Headmaster, Headmistress, or the Ministry. Generally our judgment is assumed adequate." She lifted her eyebrows at Harry. "Although regular attendance is usually expected. Where exactly are you planning to go?"

"I don't know yet," he admitted. He just knew that if he meant to find the rest of the Horcruxes, he'd have to leave eventually. He didn't want to explain that to McGonagall, though. "I... I didn't really expect to come back here. I have to deal with Voldemort." He certainly hadn't planned on agreeing to stay at the school, or teach -- what had he been thinking?

No, he knew the answer to that. He had to hunt down the Horcruxes and Voldemort, but he hadn't been able to stand there and let Umbridge worm her way into putting her hands all over Hogwarts again.

"I'm sure this is the best place from which to plan your campaign," Salazar was saying. "You'll need allies and more information, after all."

"I know there's a lot I have to find out," Harry began cautiously.

"Then you won't mind attending classes while you're here," McGonagall said. "And not teaching them."

Harry gave her a slightly exasperated look. "I don't have _time_. Headmistress," he added belatedly.

"Actually," Hermione began tentatively, "there are probably still things it would be... better... to study."

Ron shook his head at her. "If you're thinking of taking our NEWTs, somehow I don't think we're going to be able to focus on that."

Salazar blinked. "How did newts enter the conversation?"

"They're the exams at the end of seventh year," Hermione said. "When students finish at Hogwarts."

"Ah. Well, no, those will hardly be your first priority by comparison to seeking out Voldemort. But you may be able to receive some assistance nonetheless, and I'm sure the professors can be persuaded to be accommodating and assist you with further instruction on a more flexible basis." He smiled. "I certainly hope so. I would imagine there have been a number of magical advances and inventions I'll need to catch up on myself." He paused, raising an eyebrow at McGonagall. "And procedures. I didn't like to question your decision in front of the toad-woman, but... Head of _Gryffindor_?"

McGonagall pursed her lips. "Head of Slytherin is filled," she said. "Dolores Umbridge is correct -- if in nothing else -- that I should not remain head of any House, and I am only willing to go so far in putting Mr. Potter in the position of handling discipline for his fellow pupils. I hope," she said, glancing up at Slytherin keenly -- not very far up, either -- "that you will be able to restrain your partisanship regarding both Houses and _ancestry_."

They locked eyes for a long moment, McGonagall's lips thinned and chin lifted, Salazar's expression more relaxed and almost... fascinated.

"History wins," Salazar murmured at last. "And Godric too, evidently. I do look forward to working with you." He tilted his head slightly and beckoned to Jakinda. "May we discuss accommodations? I would prefer to keep my daughter with me."

McGonagall blinked. "She's not a student?"

"I'm a Squib," Jakinda said abruptly. It was easy to tell she didn't really know the words, even if she knew what she wanted to say. "And talking may be a problem, for a while." She reached up to touch the brim of the Sorting Hat. "Thank you," she added. "I will try to begin learning... without, now." And, with a determined expression, she lifted the Sorting Hat from her head and put it back on the shelf. She gave it an affectionate pat and went to stand by Salazar.

"Language lessons, then," McGonagall said briskly.

"I can help," Hermione volunteered.

"Thank you." McGonagall nodded to Hermione, then turned to Salazar. "We can see to arranging your rooms for two, then."

"Could we go send owls home?" Ron said. "We've been gone for weeks, and for another thing, none of us _packed_."

McGonagall's eyes widened slightly. "Of course. Inform your families. I should have thought of that at once."

"The Dursleys weren't expecting me," Harry said. His eyes kept going back to the portrait of Dumbledore. "Would it be all right if I... stayed in here for a little while?"

That drew some curious looks, but McGonagall agreed, and Ron promised to mention him in his own letter home.

Harry was finally left alone in the Headmaster's... Headmistress's office, now. He sat down in a chair opposite the desk and waited a while, then drew up his knees and sat with his arms wrapped around them as though he were much younger than seventeen.

At last, the snoozing portrait of Dumbledore opened one eye, then the other, and that familiar face looked kindly down at Harry from behind painted spectacles. "Good afternoon, Harry. I understand you've arrived just in time for term to start."

Harry swallowed hard. "Yeah. I wasn't -- I wasn't sure if I'd make it. I hadn't planned to." The words seemed ripped out of him; he hadn't planned to say that, unsure how Dumbledore would have reacted, though the decision had seemed good when he made it. "And then... well, it's been a funny summer."

"Tell me about it," Dumbledore invited him.

So Harry did. He said the funeral had been very dignified and the speeches had been very dull and not at all like Dumbledore himself, but that the white fire and phoenix song had made his heart ache. He told the portrait about Bill and Fleur's wedding, which Dumbledore was very sorry to have missed, and about Fenrir Greyback's attack on Gabrielle Delacour and her mother's vicious defense. He told Dumbledore about finding Trevor in the compost heap with a new basilisk named Maeve, whom he supposed would have to come to Hogwarts since Ginny would. Introducing her to Salazar Slytherin ought to be interesting. He told Dumbledore of finding out the locket he'd died for was a fake, of finding the real locket Horcrux in Grimmauld Place, of trying to bring it to Bill and being diverted to Salazar Slytherin's house in the woods with his Squib daughter. He told of the Occlumency lessons turned to Legilimency lessons with Godric Gryffindor, of Hermione and her runes and Ron and his chess pieces and blue lightning in twisting sand. He told him that Salazar Slytherin wasn't such a bad sort after all, really, and had been a lot of help and was now going to teach Transfiguration, even though the portrait had been around to see that much. He mentioned hating Snape.

"He is still ours," Dumbledore said softly.

"He killed you!"

"He did." The painted mouth smiled gently. "I had hoped it would not be necessary."

"It can't have been necessary." Harry's voice broke. "He used the Killing Curse. He hated you, I could see it."

"I had my reasons for trusting him. They still hold."

"What were they? What could they possibly have been?"

"I trust Severus Snape," the portrait repeated. Dumbledore shook his head gently, then looked over Harry's head. "Hush, Phineas. You never understood them in the first place. Harry, there are some things I still cannot tell you. I promised to hold silence on some of them, and I do keep confidences. Believe that you do not have the whole story."

"You said you'd made mistakes."

"So I did. So I have. But I still do not believe this was among them." Dumbledore steepled his fingers. "Now, let us talk of other things."

"Like what?"

"Well, for one thing... or rather several things... there is the trouble Minerva has been having with the Ministry."

Harry scowled. "Isn't Scrimgeour _ever_ going to have any sense?"

"Believe it or not, Harry," the portrait said mildly, "Scrimgeour is not her primary problem. As you might perhaps have gathered, Umbridge does not approve of the powers he has granted to Aurors. I would be more inclined to agree with her reservations, of course, if not for the fact that she objects less to the permission to use Unforgivable Curses and to make arrests and hold prisoners in spite of contradictory evidence, and more to the fact that these powers are not available to _her_ and to her department but only in the field. She also seems to feel some not inconsiderable loyalty to Fudge, and is less cooperative than he has been in supporting the new government. I'm afraid there have been some severe communications breakdowns... some of these are merely bureaucratic problems and have little effect on anyone who is unwilling to let themselves be paralyzed by such things, but the situation in Azkaban has, if this is possible, deteriorated badly."

"I know she's bad," Harry said, "but I don't see how she can be worse than Dementors."

"Ah, but Harry, some of the Dementors are attracted by familiarity if nothing else -- familiarity, and the knowledge that there has in the past been food for the taking there -- to return to Azkaban. And I believe you are familiar with Dolores Umbridge's views on the active use of spells against the Dark Arts... she will only permit the casting of a Patronus if the individual who wishes to cast it has gone through a complex authorization process and satisfied her with pledges of obedience."

"But that's stupid. That's ridiculous. It's not even an offensive spell like the ones she was complaining about before -- I've been hit with it, I accidentally hit Godric with it, it doesn't hurt people! Is she even pretending anymore?"

"She pretends to a love of order and correct procedure."

Harry sighed. "We've got the teaching part taken care of for now, anyway. I... well, I don't suppose I'm really qualified to get anybody ready for the Defense NEWT, but I couldn't just let _her_ do it when what people need is to learn to take care of themselves and fight!" He winced. "Even though I need to find the Horcruxes. And Voldemort."

"You could have stood aside," Dumbledore said, "but you would have been less yourself for it. And Salazar has a point in that there are things you could still learn from the professors here, that might help you."

Harry looked up at him. "But you said not to tell people about the Horcruxes."

"You may want to mention to Salazar that it's a secret," the Sorting Hat said. "He's close-mouthed, but he may think you've shared the plan more widely than you've done. And get him to help you with your Legilimency practice."

"What?" Harry turned in surprise. "He never mentioned he was a Legilimens too! Neither did Godric."

The Hat gave a clothy chuckle. "He's better at doing than teaching it. Too secretive. But it sounds as if you're far enough along for him to be some help."

"Right, then," Harry said. He looked up at Dumbledore again. "I suppose I should go."

"Indeed." Dumbledore looked down over his glasses. The paint didn't catch the twinkle in his eyes... but maybe there just wasn't one there right now. He looked deadly serious. "I shall trust in your discretion, Harry. Tell what you must, when you must."

Harry stood up and took a deep breath. "All right."

-----


End file.
